Industrialisation and mechanisation of transportation have created substantial increases in noise production. At the same time the trend towards larger cities and a reduced proportion of the population living in rural settings has concentrated people in areas of greater noise. The confluence of these factors has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of the population exposed to noise from outside sources while living in their homes. The noise may arise from motor traffic, aircraft, trains, boats, factories, construction, power plants or electrical transmission lines, wind turbines, music or television, air-conditioning plant, or neighbours and their pets.

People may react to this noise with dissatisfaction, annoyance, anger, frustration, disappointment, disturbance, sleep loss or disturbance of living activities among others reactions (1). These responses to noise are generally known as community reaction. Community reaction is of importance for two reasons. First, it is of importance as a factor of human quality of life, in its own right. People who have their daily activities (conservation, listening to music, watching television, reading, sleeping) disturbed, and who are dissatisfied and annoyed clearly have reduced quality of life. Within the World Health Organization`s definition of health (as well-being, not just the absence of disease) community reaction to noise is itself a negative health factor. Second, community reaction may be a factor in other aspects of health. It is possible that high levels of reaction to noise contribute to other putative effects of noise such as elevated  blood pressure (see 2) and mental health problems  such as anxiety and depression (see 3,4).

 Socio-acoustic investigations of noise have been conducted since the 1950s, with one small survey in 1943 (see 5). Commensurate with the growth of the problem of community noise, the number of studies reported has also grown substantially over the years. For example. Fields’ (5) catalogue of studies reported up to 1989 identifies 1 study conducted in the 1940s, 5 in the 1950s, 40 in the 1960s, 190 in the 1970s, and 80 to that time in the 1980s. The number of studies conducted in the 1980s is no doubt substantially underestimated by virtue of the considerable lag time from conduct to publication. Thus many studies conducted in the 1980s would not have been reported when Fields collated the research, and may not even be reported yet.

This chapter reviews socio-acoustic studies of community reaction to noise. It presents a model of community reaction, and describes the noise-reaction relationship, other factors which influence reaction, and factors influenced by reaction. First, the methods of socio-acoustic investigations of community reaction are described. Methodological limitations are briefly described in terms of the quality of measurement of the independent and dependent variables.