Impact of Complexity on Perceived Affective Quality and Perceived Restorativeness in Indoor Soundscapes

Abstract

Eventfulness and pleasantness are two prominent components of soundscape perception, and their interplay creates attributes that are used to measure the perceived affective quality of soundscapes. Even though restorativeness is not among the principal components of soundscape perception, it is involved with soundscapes' perceived affective quality attributes. While the contribution of these attributes is well established, there is still a lack of understanding regarding how soundscape complexity impacts perceived restorativeness and perceived affective quality. There are tools, such as the Acoustic Complexity Index, to measure the complexity of natural soundscapes but soundscapes of the built environment lack such an index. This study aims (1) to understand the relationship between complexity, perceived affective quality and perceived restorativeness and (2) to explore and compare the effectiveness of different means of measuring acoustical complexity. With this regard, we conducted an online questionnaire survey which consisted of twenty soundscape recordings. We asked the participants to evaluate the perceived affective quality and perceived restorativeness of each recording. We then calculated the acoustic complexity indices, Acoustic complexity, Acoustic Diversity, Acoustic Evenness, and Normalized Differences Soundscape Index. Finally, we conducted a series of statistical analyses to explore the relationships between each variable. © 2023 Acun et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.