Being a Fair Neighbor—Towards a Psychometric Inventory to Assess Fairness-Related Perceptions of Airports by Residents—Development and Validation of the Aircraft Noise-Related Fairness Inventory (fAIR-In)

Dominik Hauptvogel (), Dirk Schreckenberg, Tobias Rothmund, Marie-Therese Schmitz and Susanne Bartels
Additional contact information
Dominik Hauptvogel: 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
Marie-Therese Schmitz: Working Group Biostatistics, Institute of Medical Biometry, Informatics, Epidemiology (IMBIE), University of Bonn, Venusberg-Campus 1, 53127 Bonn, Germany
Susanne Bartels: German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Sleep and Human Factors Research, Linder Höhe, 51147 Cologne, Germany

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 12, 1-21

Abstract: Aircraft noise causes a variety of negative health consequences, and annoyance is a central factor mediating stress-related health risks. Non-acoustic factors play an important role in the experience of annoyance where the aspect of fairness is assumed to be a vital component. This paper describes the development of the Aircraft Noise-related Fairness Inventory (fAIR-In) and examines its factorial validity, construct validity and predictive validity. The development of the questionnaire included expert consultations, statements from airport residents and a large-scale online survey around three German airports (N = 1367). Its items cover distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal fairness. Via mailshot, almost 100,000 flyers were sent out in more (>55 dB(A) L den )- and less (≤55 dB(A) L den )-aircraft-noise-exposed areas around Cologne-Bonn, Dusseldorf and Dortmund Airport. Thirty-two items were carefully selected considering reliability, theoretical importance and factor loading calculated via exploratory factor analysis (EFA), with all facets achieving high internal consistency (α = 0.89 to 0.92). The factorial validity, analyzed via a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), revealed that viewing distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal fairness as distinct factors produced a better fit to the data than other categorizations with fewer factors. The fAIR-In shows adequate results in terms of construct validity and excellent results in terms of the predictive validity of annoyance by aircraft noise (r = −0.53 to r = −0.68), acceptance of airports and air traffic (r = 0.46 to r = 0.59) and willingness to protest (r = −0.28 to r = −0.46). The fAIR-In provides airport managers with a reliable, valid and easy-to-use tool to design, monitor and evaluate efforts to improve the neighborliness between an airport and its residents.

Keywords: fairness; justice; procedural; distributive; interactional; informational; aircraft; noise; annoyance; scale; inventory; psychometric; validity; reliability; CFA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/12/6113/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/12/6113/ (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:20:y:2023:i:12:p:6113-:d:1169785

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 ().