The effect of Community Noise on health and well-being

There has been considerable recent research in relation to the effects of environmental noise on one’s health and wellbeing. However, there is limited research within a New Zealand context and with recent concerns about aviation and wind turbine noise making this especially important. The current research is a pilot study that attempted to investigate the relationship between aviation noise and noise sensitivity on annoyance and self reported quality of life. The findings from this study indicate that noise sensitivity significantly predicted for the quality of life domains of physical health, psychological well-being, environment and social relationships. In relation to the link between noise sensitivity and annoyance, the findings indicate that noise sensitivity significantly predicts for annoyance with habitation negatively predicting for general annoyance. In relation to aviation annoyance, length of stay was found to be the only predictor with longer length of stay found to negatively predict for annoyance towards aviation noise