By Caren Cooper, Jin Bai, Deja Perkins, and Lincoln Larson

Photo by (and of) George Harley-Wenn III

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

Experiences with nature can restore human emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. Our experiences occur through our senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Does the restorative aspect of nature vary for different senses? For example, does feeling the coolness of a forest, smelling the soil in a park, and/or seeing greenery improve one’s mood, increase concentration ability, and lower blood pressure? Experiences with nature can also motivate behaviors to conserve or protect natural places. In this study, we focused on the acoustic environment, where anthropogenic sounds can mask our ability to experience natural sources of sound. We found a link between human perceptions of their acoustic environment and the depth of their meaningful connections to where they live (sense of place). In the citizen science project, Sound Around Town, more than 2,000 participants identified the sources of sounds outdoors where they live and rated the pleasantness and loudness of each. Participants with a high sense of place were those who detected louder and more pleasant natural sounds like birds and wind. Participants who reported suburban-like soundscapes with louder, and more pleasant non-mechanical anthropogenic sounds like music or quieter cars and planes also had a high sense of place. Those who experienced city-like soundscapes with less pleasant mechanical anthropogenic sounds, like loud cars and planes, had a low sense of place. The importance of sound sources highlights a mismatch with policy. The acoustic environment is typically only measured and regulated based on sensors that measure sound frequencies and decibel levels, but we found sense of place to be influenced by the sources of sound as detected by people, highlighting an important new aspect when regulating noise.