Aircraft Noise Distribution as a Fairness Dilemma—A Review of Aircraft Noise through the Lens of Social Justice Research

Dominik Hauptvogel, Susanne Bartels, Dirk Schreckenberg and Tobias Rothmund
Additional contact information
Dominik Hauptvogel: German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Sleep and Human Factors Research, Linder Höhe, 51147 Cologne, Germany
Susanne Bartels: German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Sleep and Human Factors Research, Linder Höhe, 51147 Cologne, Germany
Dirk Schreckenberg: ZEUS GmbH, Zentrum für Angewandte Psychologie, Umwelt- und Sozialforschung, Sennbrink 46, 58093 Hagen, Germany
Tobias Rothmund: Institute for Communication Science, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Ernst-Abbe Platz 8, 07743 Jena, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-18

Abstract: Aircraft noise exposure is a health risk and there is evidence that noise annoyance partly mediates the association between noise exposure and stress-related health risks. Thus, approaches to reduce annoyance may be beneficial for health. Annoyance is influenced by manifold non-acoustic factors and perceiving a fair and trustful relationship between the airport and its residents may be one of them. The distribution of aircraft noise exposure can be regarded as a fairness dilemma: while residents living near an airport may seem to have some advantages, the majority of residents living under certain flight routes or in their immediate proximity suffer from the disadvantages of the airport, especially the noise. Moreover, a dilemma exists between the airport’s beneficial economic impact for a region and the physical and psychological integrity of residents. Aircraft noise exposure through the lens of social justice research can help to improve our understanding of noise annoyance. Research indicates that the fairness perceptions of the parties involved can be enhanced by (a) improving individual cost–benefit ratios, (b) providing a fair procedure for deciding upon the noise distribution, and (c) implementing fair social interaction with residents. Based on the review of evidence from social justice research, we derive recommendations on how fairness aspects can be integrated into aircraft noise management with the purpose of improving the relationship between the airport and its residents, to reduce annoyance, and to enhance the acceptance of local aviation and the airport as a neighbor.

Keywords: fairness; justice; procedural; distributional; informational; interpersonal; aircraft noise; aviation; annoyance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7399/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7399/ (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:18:y:2021:i:14:p:7399-:d:592229

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 ().