Being a Fair Neighbor—Towards a Psychometric Inventory to Assess Fairness-Related Perceptions of Airports by Residents—Development and Validation of the Aircraft Noise-Related Fairness Inventory (fAIR-In)

Aircraft noise causes a variety of negative health consequences, and annoyance is a central factor mediating stress-related health risks. Non-acoustic factors play an important role in the experience of annoyance where the aspect of fairness is assumed to be a vital component. This paper describes the development of the Aircraft Noise-related Fairness Inventory (fAIR-In) and examines its factorial validity, construct validity and predictive validity. The development of the questionnaire included expert consultations, statements from airport residents and a large-scale online survey around three German airports (N = 1367). Its items cover distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal fairness. Via mailshot, almost 100,000 flyers were sent out in more (>55 dB(A) L(den))- and less (≤55 dB(A) L(den))-aircraft-noise-exposed areas around Cologne-Bonn, Dusseldorf and Dortmund Airport. Thirty-two items were carefully selected considering reliability, theoretical importance and factor loading calculated via exploratory factor analysis (EFA), with all facets achieving high internal consistency (α = 0.89 to 0.92). The factorial validity, analyzed via a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), revealed that viewing distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal fairness as distinct factors produced a better fit to the data than other categorizations with fewer factors. The fAIR-In shows adequate results in terms of construct validity and excellent results in terms of the predictive validity of annoyance by aircraft noise (r = −0.53 to r = −0.68), acceptance of airports and air traffic (r = 0.46 to r = 0.59) and willingness to protest (r = −0.28 to r = −0.46). The fAIR-In provides airport managers with a reliable, valid and easy-to-use tool to design, monitor and evaluate efforts to improve the neighborliness between an airport and its residents.