Can you really put a price on a good night's sleep?

Abstract

This article focuses on estimation of willingness of people to pay extra price for increased sound insulation quality. As a case study a typical 3 room apartment in Bratislava was chosen. Online listening tests were used as a tool to understand the preferred price-quality ratio. The primary financial value of a case study apartment was estimated on real estate market in the third quarter of 2020. Later, nine (9) different variants of sound insulation of partition walls separating dwellings were considered. These walls were chosen on basis of different construction system (1) heavy weight brick walls, (1) light-weight gypsum board walls and (2) double walls. Each construction base was divided into three categories of defined by weighed sound transmission index Rw (53 dB, 55 dB and 59 dB). The four types of sounds (pink noise, cough, quarrel, party noise) were filtered through the frequency spectra R(dB) of chosen walls. These sounds were presented during the online listening test along with a total price for the particular apartment. The test subjects were asked to decide, which apartment they would choose based on an increased acoustic comfort and increased price of the apartment. In total, 60 subjects performed the test.