European citizen and environmental noise: Information contents, frequency and communication ways

Following the guidelines of the European Directive on Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise, since 2002 Labein's Acoustical Area has included noise communication and information between citizens and council into psychosocial studies of the environmental noise impact (annoyance). In the psychosocial studies data are recollected through a questionnaire. In the last psychosocial study carried out, 296 citizens (random sample) of a town of the north of Spain (100.000 inhabitants) were interviewed. The results indicated that the citizens had very little knowledge about their environmental noise (environmental noise level, action plans, noise sources, population with high annoyance...) and this could be due to a lack of communication between authorities and citizens. Nevertheless, the citizens seemed to be very interested in receiving information about the different aspects of environmental noise, moreover about the one related with acoustical improvements (action plans), and they would like to receive this information around every three months. The postal mail and the council magazine were the favourite ways to receive this environmental noise information.