Research on the Combined Effects of Plant Odor and Traffic Noise on Crowd Behaviors in Urban Environments

Highlights

	● Crowd path tends to move towards the odor source, especially when the sound pressure level of traffic noise is high
	● Crowd speed slows down as the odor concentration increases at high sound pressure level of traffic noise
	● Crowd speed is almost unaffected by plant odor at low sound pressure level of traffic noise

Abstract

Traffic noise is a typical negative sound source in urban environments with impacts on crowd behaviors. To explore the combined effects of auditory–olfactory interaction environments on crowd behaviors, this study conducted a covert behavioral observation experiment on a typical urban street uniformly planted with lilacs (Syringa spp.) to investigate the combined effects of plant odor and traffic noise on crowd path and crowd speed. The results showed that: 1) for crowd path, when the sound pressure level (SPL) was high, the path ranges and their mean values under different odor concentrations all showed a tendency to be farther away from the sound source than when it was low; the mean values of path ranges gradually moved towards the odor source as the odor went from none to strong, which was more significant at high SPL, with a maximum longitudinal movement of about 0.3 m. 2) For crowd speed, its mean values gradually slowed down from 1.24 m/s at high SPL as the odor went from none to strong and then stabilized at 1.18 m/s; however, those at low SPL were almost unaffected. This research puts forward new ideas to alleviate the negative impacts of traffic noise, and the study results can provide guiding significance for the improvement of the evaluation system of urban landscape quality and the optimization of urban design mode.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Plant Odor / Traffic Noise / Combined Effect / Crowd Path / Crowd Speed / Auditory–Olfactory Interaction Environment

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Acknowledgements

·Project of "Research on the Optimization Design of Community Public Spaces to Promote the Interactive Perception of Audition and Olfaction Among Visually Impaired People, " Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project (No. 23NDJC135YB) ·Project of "Effect of Environmental Factors of Audio and Olfactory Modalities in Community Public Spaces on Spatial Cognition of Visually Impaired People, " National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52308024) ·Project of "Influential Mechanism and Optimization of Multi-modal Environment on Perceptual Evaluation of Urban Traffic Noise, " Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. LQ23E080010) ·Project of "Research on the Influence Mechanism of Temporal-spatial Complexity on Cognition in Residential Sound Environment of Intelligent Buildings, " National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52408114)

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