City, town, village: Potential differences in residents soundscape perception using ISO/TS 12913-2:2018

Soundscape studies aim to provide a comprehensive perspective to the acoustic environment, beyond noise, and its impact on quality of life, including the interrelationships between person, activity and place. The purpose of this study is to assess the influence of residence location (city, town, village) on the perception of soundscape and specifically on the dimensions of the soundscape circumplex. For this objective, residents (N = 90) from different areas of Greece (city: Athens, town: Chania, village: Dermatianika) participated in listening tests and principal component analysis (PCA) was applied in order to compare the results. The outcome was also compared with results from English participants (city: London, N = 32). In addition, the sound stimuli were clustered according to their content, based on the dominance of sounds embedded in their natural context into 'technological', 'natural' and 'human'. Some of the main findings are: biggest differences between the participants were found for the perception of chaotic, vibrant, monotonous and uneventful; village residents perceived technological sounds as more chaotic than the city residents; city residents perceived natural sounds as more monotonous, more uneventful and less vibrant compared to village residents; responses to human sounds had the least differences among residence locations and sound clusters. In addition, results led to the re-evaluation of the conclusions of an earlier cross-cultural study where the location of residence was not taken into consideration. These findings provide an empirical basis for the residence location of subjects in the perception of soundscapes that should be taken into account in soundscape assessment, comparisons and cross-cultural studies, as well as potential interventions.