Do Quiet Areas Afford Greater Health-Related Quality of Life than Noisy Areas?

Daniel Shepherd, David Welch, Kim N. Dirks and David McBride
Additional contact information
Daniel Shepherd: School of Public Health, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
David Welch: School of Population Health, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Kim N. Dirks: School of Population Health, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
David McBride: Department of Preventative and Social Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

IJERPH, 2013, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: People typically choose to live in quiet areas in order to safeguard their health and wellbeing. However, the benefits of living in quiet areas are relatively understudied compared to the burdens associated with living in noisy areas. Additionally, research is increasingly focusing on the relationship between the human response to noise and measures of health and wellbeing, complementing traditional dose-response approaches, and further elucidating the impact of noise and health by incorporating human factors as mediators and moderators. To further explore the benefits of living in quiet areas, we compared the results of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) questionnaire datasets collected from households in localities differentiated by their soundscapes and population density: noisy city, quiet city, quiet rural, and noisy rural. The dose-response relationships between noise annoyance and HRQOL measures indicated an inverse relationship between the two. Additionally, quiet areas were found to have higher mean HRQOL domain scores than noisy areas. This research further supports the protection of quiet locales and ongoing noise abatement in noisy areas.

Keywords: quiet; noise; quality of life (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/4/1284/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/4/1284/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:10:y:2013:i:4:p:1284-1303:d:24610

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().