Investigation of Chinese residents’ community response to high-speed railway noise

Abstract

With the rapid development of high-speed rail worldwide, particularly in China, which has the longest such network, incidents of its noise’s adverse effects have vastly increased. A social survey on community response to high-speed railway noise was conducted in Tianjin, China, from March 2018 to March 2019. A total of 1002 residents, along the Beijing-Tianjin intercity high-speed railway line and Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway line, were interviewed on annoyance and activity interference caused by high-speed railway noise. Consequently, the exposure–response relationship curve was established for gauging the effects of high-speed railway noise on Chinese residents. It showed that the proportion of Chinese residents with high noise annoyance and activity interference increased exponentially with the increase of high-speed railway noise levels. The results proved that background noise had an important effect on the evaluation of noise annoyance. The duration of a single noise event might affect activity disturbance. In addition to acoustic factors, community response to high-speed railway noise was also greatly influenced by subjective characteristics, such as noise sensitivity, satisfaction in the living environment, and satisfaction in housing.