Factors responsible for road traffic noise annoyance in the city of Sfax, Tunisia

This study sets out to investigate the principal acoustical and non-acoustical factors for road-traffic noise annoyance in Sfax, Tunisia. The depiction of these factors aims to better control the noise annoyance, which presents one of several public health problems related to excessive exposure to road-traffic noise. In this study, a mixed methods research was adopted based on in-situ questionnaires, urban morphological observations and noise measurements. The questionnaires were performed on 1272 residents living close to the road infrastructure of Sfax, in order to define personal and sociodemographic annoyance factors associated with traffic noise. Situational factors were determined using morphological observations of the study areas. A total of 633 noise measurements were taken on 211 different points of the city to specify the traffic noise levels and the acoustical factors involved. After performing a statistical analysis based on stepwise logistic regression, it was found that noise sensitivity, the orientation of windows of living room and/or bedroom toward the street and fear of source are the main factors of noise annoyance. Moreover, the dose-response relationship between L-den and the percentage of highly annoyed subjects indicated that the high level of noise annoyance starts from 60 dB (A) and showed a considerable increase above 65 dB (A). Finally, it was deduced that the noise annoyance due to road-traffic noise depends mainly on personal and situational variables, and that the general impact of non-acoustical factors on annoyance is higher than that of acoustical factors. The results of this study can help public health officials in Tunisia to provide meaningful noise countermeasures. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.