A path model applied to social survey data on road traffic noise annoyance constructed with the induction method

摘要

Words representing the degree of annoyance vary with region and other factors. In many papers published up to date, however, the factors above were not all considered during selection of the rating words. In this paper, path analysis is applied to social survey data collected with the induction method of reasoning which discovered a general annoyance scale from the rating words representing psychological effects for vehicle noise sources by residents in Nagano City. The model is based on the postulate that an individual's annoyance obtained the whole judgment through social survey at road traffic noise is a function of 16 antecedent factors. Of these, five (distance, sex, age, length of residence, and license) are exogenous, that is variables within the model are not dependent on any other factors, and the remaining 11 (hard to open windows, sensitivity to noise, L_(Aeq), habituation, driving manners, relaxation disturbance, read disturbance, listening interference to the radio/TV, interfere with conversation, work efficiency, sleep disturbance) are endogenous and therefore hypothesized to be partially determined by specified exogenous variables. The results show that the strongest direct effects are relaxation disturbance, listening interference to the radio/TV, sleep disturbance, sensitivity to noise, interfere with conversation. The strongest indirect effects are distance, sensitivity to noise, L_(Aeq), driving manners, habituation and hard to open windows. Overall the model explains R~2=0.60 of the variation in the annoyance reported by the 523 survey respondents. It can be said that this path model is able to explain the definition of annoyance collected with the induction method.