Naslov
Positive health-related effects of perceiving urban soundscapes: a systematic review

Autori
Aletta, Francesco ; Oberman, Tin ; Kang, Jian

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
The Lancet 392, suppl. 2 / - , 2018, 3-3

Skup
Public Health Science: A National Conference Dedicated to New Research in UK Public Health

Mjesto i datum
Belfast, Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo, 23.11.2018

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
soundscape ; environmental noise ; public health ; well-being ; quality of life ; restoration

Sažetak
Environmental sounds are mostly considered in their noise facet, as psychophysical stressors, leading to adverse health effects. Soundscape research shifts this paradigm to consider sounds as environmental resources. Soundscapes identify “sound environments as perceived by people, in context” according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 12913-1). The aim of this systematic review was to assess associations between soundscapes and positive effects on health. We searched Scopus and PubMed between Jan 1, 1991, and May 31, 2018, for studies that assessed the positive effects of individual responses to urban acoustic environments on individual psychophysical wellbeing, with combinations of the keywords “soundscape” and at least one of “health”, “well-being”, or “Quality of Life”. Reference lists of the retrieved items were manually searched. Inclusion criteria were: publication in peer-reviewed journals and in English ; having at least one measure of soundscape dimensions (ISO 12913-1 definition) ; and including at least one health-related measure. The search returned 130 results ; after removing duplicates, two authors screened titles and abstracts and selected 19 articles for further analysis. Seven studies (one UK, one the Netherlands, two Sweden, and three New Zealand) were eventually included, with 2783 participants. All studies included a valence-related soundscape measure (eg, annoyance, pleasantness). Four of them included physiological monitoring and three included self-reported psychological measures. Positive soundscapes were associated with faster stress-recovery physiological processes in laboratory experiments, and better self- reported health conditions in large-scale surveys. This is possibly the first systematic review to consider the positive effects of soundscapes on health and well-being. However, because of the limited number of articles and differences in measures across studies, no statistical analysis was performed, and we had to pursue a qualitative approach to data synthesis. Results support the claim that, in contrast with regarding noise only as an environmental stressor, sound perception can enhance the human experience, from a health-related viewpoint, in urban environments. Funding: European Research Council (advanced grant no 740696).

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Arhitektura i urbanizam, Interdisciplinarne tehničke znanosti, Javno zdravstvo i zdravstvena zaštita

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