Differences in soundscape appreciation of walking sounds from different footpath materials in urban parks

The perception of the acoustic environment, namely the soundscape, in urban parks has attracted increasing attention. There is a growing belief that the management of the acoustic environment of urban parks should be addressed within a broader soundscape methodology rather than a merely noise control one. One of the most frequent sound sources in urban parks is walking sound; however walking sound perception so far has mainly been investigated for indoor environments. This paper aims to investigate the overall effect of walking sounds from different walked-on materials on people's soundscape, combined with other non-acoustical factors. Moreover, this research investigates how perception varies when the walking sound is self-produced or simply listened. To this purpose, two laboratory experiments in Italy and UK were carried out with four walked-on materials that were considered to be possible design solutions for the footpaths of urban parks: grass, wood, stone and gravel. Results showed a significant effect of materials on perceived noise annoyance and soundscape quality, as well as a partial influence of other nonacoustical factor. Considering the individual responses for the four selected materials, gravel was associated to the worst soundscape quality (M = 38.42) while grass to the best one (M = 65.05). While a group effect (Italian and UK samples) was observed for perceived noise annoyance corresponding to the materials, no significant group effect was found for soundscape evaluation. Eventually, people simply listening to the walking sounds resulted to be less tolerant towards them, with respect to people who self-produced the sounds by walking.