A research on cognition of Soundscape in daily life of university students living in Tokyo

Abstract

In the present research, interest to soundscape that is cognized by a person in everyday life is investigated. Ordinarily, a person perceives their environment by using his sense. Using hearing sense, he perceives acoustic environment. At the same time, he perceives light environment by vision, thermal environment by sensation of warmth, and air quality by smell. In such a case, knowing how important acoustic environment is for people among various environment is seemed to be useful for creating good soundscape. To reveal this point, one investigation using a questionnaire of freedescription is carried out. Forty-five university students who were all twenties and lived in Tokyo participated in the investigation. They were instructed to write down perceived environment (acoustic, light, thermal, or air quality environment) and its comfortableness in their daily life at home, office, or part time job. Results showed that 7.3 environments per person were answered by questionee, and 41.9% of answer were about acoustic environment. They also showed that 49.3% of answers about acoustic environment said uncomfortable, but that answered acoustic environment and its comfortableness varied widely. It is supposed that students in Tokyo relatively have high level interest in soundscape among various environments.