A review of the psychological effect of environmental sound

Abstract

Few studies have stressed how access to high-quality acoustic environment affects wellbeing, quality of life, and environmental health. The acoustic environment influenced by noise pollution reduces the restorative effect generated by the natural environment. Noise policies which focus on noise level as a determinant of wanted and unwanted sounds are inadequate to control the acoustic quality of the environment. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the psychological effect of environmental sound and the direction of study for environmental sound research from 1993 to 2020. Review works of literature were identified through multiple interdisciplinary health, environmental, and urban planning databases in available open access journals. The focus of the study will look into keywords of "environmental sound", "noise", “acoustic environment” and "mental health". The review showed that previous study focused on the negative effect of noise and noise mitigation methods through the noise level controls in the guidelines. On the other hand, recent reviews continue to discuss the impact of noise further and add on a positive view of the psychological effect of environmental sound. Noise mitigation methods also focused on enhancing positive sounds and methods for a more comprehensive study of the environmental sound.