Assigning a monetary value to aircraft noise annoyance
Results
of quantitative analysis
Results of the “Stated Preference” Analyses
Introduction
It is well known that an airport creates employment and, in general, benefits the local and national economies. It is also well known that communities living in the vicinity of airports are subjected to annoyance directly related to airport operations (noise, air and water pollution). Aircraft noise is the most significant environmental impact which affects the lives of millions of people daily. Air traffic continues to grow and 60% of European airports are already limited by their “environmental capacity”.
Work is being undertaken in several fields to minimise noise:
· On-going research to reduce aircraft noise at source;
· European Commission directives on Environmental Noise and for calculating noise charges;
· Development of procedures aimed at significantly improving noise exposure profiles,
However, there is another important factor which receives much less attention than the noise calculated from a number of aircraft movements – the perception of noise. But when does noise become annoyance? What are the factors responsible for differences in levels of perception of noise?
The 5A study, started in June 2002, looks at how residents near
airports react to aircraft noise. The aim of the pilot project is to explore
how different factors (socio-economic, cultural, age, status, education and
situation) modify the way in which a given level of noise translates into a
level of reported annoyance and to determine which noise-metric/model
correlates best with disturbance as indicated by annoyance and complaints at a
European level See
‘A Review
of Complaints and Social Surveys at Manchester Airport’.
Initial work on this project was reported in an EEC Newsletter article published in November 2002. This report described the focus groups that were run to establish the part that an airport had to play in the quality of life of the people living near it.
The second phase of the pilot project consisted of the design of a questionnaire integrating the findings of these focus groups into an attitude survey, again looking at quality of life criteria in the vicinity of airports, but this time including external cost estimation techniques. This enables providing a monetary value for nuisance.
Two hundred people were surveyed around
each of the three study airports: Manchester International Airport, Lyon Saint-
Exupéry and Bucharest Otopeni.
The questionnaire analysis in the beginning of 2003 gathered a large amount of valuable data. It largely focused on deriving values from a range of “stated preference” experiments. The questionnaire was designed and analysed by the Institute of Transport Studies in Leeds and details were published in the Final Report that completed the second phase.
The Questionnaire
The questionnaire applied attitudinal and “Stated preference” techniques to the issue of aircraft noise and annoyance valuation around the three chosen airports. The variants presented needed to be spread over all the sessions to test the relative importance of each.
The different factors relative to the quality of life and aircraft noise annoyance are treated both in the attitudinal section, mostly in the form of a five-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (extremely important) and, in the “Stated Preference” section, in the form of a definition of an order of preference of values for these factors.
Three different types of stated preference experiment were designed to enable methodological issues to be tested and a range of values to be estimated. The trade-off SPs were hypothetical situations but provided a means of quantifying feelings about flights
The survey designs were as far as possible identical between the countries, allowing for variations in aircraft movements, incomes and quality of life indicators. A pilot survey was carried out to test the methodology and the questionnaire. The survey was administered in late 2002 without emphasis on aircraft noise at the start:
Results of
quantitative analysis
The attitudinal
responses indicated a reasonably high degree of consensus across countries. Any
differences could be explained in terms of variations in socio-economic
conditions and/or the characteristics of the airport.
Other factors
influencing levels of annoyance include: distance from the airport, type of
area, double glazing, number of years at the address and amount of time spent
at home, personal perceptions of overall noise levels and personal sensitivity
to noise.
Aircraft noise is
not the most important aspect of the quality of life, but it is an issue with
which respondents tended to be dissatisfied.
Results of the “Stated Preference” Analyses
· Quality of life Stated Preference SP1
This SP exercise evaluated annoyance with aircraft movements in a broader quality of life dimension. It enabled the development of models which have provided plausible estimates of the valuations of aircraft annoyance with a reasonable degree of consistency regarding the quality of life importance ratings reported in the attitudinal questions.
· Aircraft Type Stated Preference SP2
A number of encouraging variations in values were apparent in this section. Some discernment between different types of aircraft is apparent. The primary aim of the study was to estimate monetary valuations and it has been possible to obtain values split by time period.
· Time of day Stated Preference SP3
This method seems to provide an attractive means of estimating the value of aircraft annoyance for different time periods within a single model. However, package effects may have been apparent, whereby respondents would not be prepared to pay the sum of the valuations for each time period to achieve improvements across all time periods. This issue has not been explicitly considered here and should feature in future work.
Conclusions
The Stated Preference analysis has been based on a data set of over 600 individuals, far more than would typically be associated with a pilot study.
Stated preference appears to be an appropriate tool with which to address the issues involved in aircraft annoyance, although care is needed in its application.
The next step is to substitute the aircraft movements in the Stated Preference with the modelled noise data and to compare measured noise and perceived noise where the respondents live. The aim is to obtain a better understanding of individual attitudes to noise annoyance and how these attitudes vary according to socio-economic and cultural dimensions.
The first key issue is the mapping of aircraft noise and consists of collecting real radar data that can then be used to model the noise at the respondents’ addresses according to the different configurations. From the current situation, noise data representing the aircraft movement scenarios of the questionnaire has been modelled. Further work will link values and annoyance ratings from the questionnaire to modelled aircraft noise at respondents’ homes. Another key issue is the mapping of aircraft noise in different indices to determine which noise metric correlates best with disturbance as indicated by annoyance and complaints by assessing the performance of a range of 3 different indices.
Links
Full
report: Attitudes Towards and Values of
Aircraft Annoyance and Noise Nuisance
Attitudes to Aircraft Annoyance Around Airports (5A) Project
Society, Environment and Economics Research Area