Attitudes towards outdoor and neighbour noise during the COVID-19 lockdown: A case study in London

To stop the spread of COVID-19 transmission, the UK put a first lockdown on the entire country during the months of March and May 2020, which strictly curtailed personal mobility and economic activities. The present study is aimed to understand attitude of people towards noise inside their homes in London during the lockdown. Tweets from the social media platform were collected during the lockdown and the same periods in 2019. Additionally, subjective responses to outdoor and neighbour noises were collected through a questionnaire survey. Tweets about noise complaints during the lockdown were more than twice of those before introduction of lockdown. A substantial increase in talking/shouting, and TV/music activities were observed among the neighbour noise sources. Similar findings were obtained from the survey. The respondents answered that the perceived outdoor noise level decreased but perceived neighbour noise level increased during the lockdown. The outdoor noise annoyance ratings were revealed to be significantly lower than those before the lockdown. In contrast, neighbour noises were more frequently heard and annoyance ratings increased compared to the pre-lockdown period. In particular, talking/shouting and TV/music were most annoying. Furthermore, neighbour noise was more annoying than outdoor noise during the lockdown. This suggests that neighbour noise is more problematic than outdoor noise during lockdown. The findings of this study would be useful in designing the future strategy to enhance the acoustic comfort and city sustainability.