Noise and subjective wellbeing

This chapter explores the state-of-the-art research on noise and subjective wellbeing (SWB), assessing the growing body of evidence that general noise pollution from road traffic, railways and airport operations is associated with lower levels of SWB. The authors present a recent case study exploring the association between aviation noise and SWB using two large United Kingdom datasets: an annual cross-sectional household survey and a geolinked experience sampling method (ESM) dataset. This provides an opportunity to assess the association between aviation noise and wellbeing measures covering evaluative (life satisfaction), eudemonic (purpose), and hedonic (happiness and relaxation) measures. The authors compare results obtained through ordinary least squares and fixed-effects regressions. Exploiting the panel nature of the ESM data provides the strongest causal claims to date of the negative association between aviation noise and SWB. In the final analysis, the authors explore how such data may help to quantify the effects of aviation noise mitigation and compensation policies.