How to gain political and public interest for noise

Mr. Wouter Witteveen1, Mr. Henk Wolfert2

1

Freelancer

{witteveenwouter@gmail.com}
2

DCMR EPA
{henk.wolfert@dcmr.nl}

Abstract
According to the Environmental Noise Directive EC 2002/49 (END), noise maps and noise
action plans have to be produced for large cities. The results of this process must be
communicated to the public. Unfortunately, the level of ambition expressed by cities in their
action plans is generally rather low. Politicians do not seem to have much interest in applying
noise reduction measures. This is why the Working Group Noise (WGN) of Eurocities
commissioned the Radboud University Nijmegen to study how political interest for noise can
be gained. This paper presents the findings of that study. The public could play an important
role in raising political interest. However, the public response to the topic of noise and to the
consultation process on the noise maps and action plans has been very mediocre. This
paper will also provide some recommendations for improving public awareness.
Keywords: Politicians, Public, Interest, Awareness, END

1. Introduction
An increasing numbers of reports suggest that noise can have an impact on public health
and the publics quality of life. This was also acknowledged by the European Commission in
1996 with its Green Paper on Future Noise Policy [1] which eventually led to the drafting of
EU directive 2002/49/EC [2], better known as the Environmental Noise Directive or END.
This is the first EU document with the aim of reducing environmental noise in general. All
earlier EU and most earlier national regulations are aimed at setting limits for specific
sources of noise. The END introduced three major obligations to be met for major
agglomerations of 250.000 or more inhabitants and for large infrastructures such as airports
and heavily used roads and railways.
Firstly, competent authorities are required to draw up strategic noise maps using the
harmonised European noise indicator L DEN. These maps need to be used to make an

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assessment of the number of people effected by noise throughout Europe. Secondly, these
maps should serve as the basis for the draw up of noise action plans which state the actions
that are to be taken to improve the noise situation in an agglomeration or in the vicinity of a
large infrastructure. Thirdly, the public should be informed and consulted about the
procedure of drawing up the noise maps and action plans.
Although the END has created some interest in noise, especially with the authorities that
have to fulfil the obligations of the END, the Working Group Noise of Eurocities recognised
that politicians and policy makers do not seem to have much interest in applying noise
reduction measures. This becomes even more clear when considering that the general level
of ambition in the action plans is perceived by some as rather low. This low level of ambition
is possible because the END leaves it up to the authorities responsible for the noise maps
and action plans to define unwanted noise situations and the actions required to deal with
these situations. On top of this, the interest of the public, or at least public knowledge on the
consultation process provided for in the END, seems to be lacking. Attendance of
consultation meetings has been mediocre at best.
In the first three chapters of this paper results from a study commissioned by the Working
Group Noise of Eurocities into the factors that lead to a low priority on the political and policy
agenda for environmental noise will be presented. Furthermore, recommendations for
improvement will be made. In the fourth and final chapter of this paper some experiences in
communicating the noise maps and action plans to the public will be discussed and detailed
recommendations for the improvement of this process will be provided.

2. Reasons for a low priority

The research project into the factors leading to a low priority for environmental noise
consisted of extensive literature research as well as a series of interviews with nearly thirty
experts that deal with noise in their daily work, ranging from among others: national and local
policy makers, scientists, (former) Members of the European Parliament and employees of
(European) lobby organisations. The main factors for a low priority for environmental noise
that were uncovered by these interviews can be classified into two main groups which both
contain a number of subfactors. The first main group is: a lack of willingness among policy
makers to take action against noise. The second main group is: doubt on the effectiveness of
measures against noise (annoyance).

2.1 Lack of willingness to take action

The main reason mentioned by the responds for noise having a low priority on the policy
agenda is that there are other issues that are perceived as more urgent. These issues
include for example air pollution. This topic has a higher position on the agenda than noise
because of the perception that refraining from tackling it might lead to very negative and
often irreversible consequence for public health. This perception seems to be missing in the
case of noise. Subfactors in this main category are: more visual issues are perceived as
more urgent, a lack of trust in the scientific evidence for a link between noise and health
problems, noise is often labelled as subjective, and conflicts with other (economic) interests.
2.1.1 More visual issues are perceived as more urgent
In the interviews, several respondents point out the invisible character of noise. In the
literary sense, noise cant be seen but can only be heard. At best, the noise source can be
seen. Furthermore, the majority of effects that are attributed to noise are invisible or are at

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least not recognised by non-experts as being caused by noise. In a figurative sense, it is

difficult to imagine that noise can be damaging. Noise does not provoke strong mental
images and therefore can hardly compete with an issue such as air pollution which for
example provokes strong images of smoking chimneys.
2.1.2 Lack of trust in scientific evidence
Hearing loss is probably the most visible health effect of noise. It is safe to say that this
effect is scientifically undisputed. However, the decibel levels of environmental noise are not
likely to cause hearing loss. This does not mean that environmental noise cant cause health
damage. A number of scientific reports do indeed associate environmental noise with health
effects. These effects are primarily indirect and long term and will therefore only become
clear after longer periods of exposure. Such long term effects are for example:
cardiovascular diseases [3], hypertension [4], and sleep disturbance [5]. Environmental noise
is also said to interfere with daily performance [6] and the learning ability of children [7].
Unfortunately, the respondents recognised an apparent lack of trust in the scientific evidence
on the link between noise and health problems. Three factors seem to be responsible for
this. Firstly, the existence of the perception that the results in different reports are sometimes
contradictory are at least not that convincing. Secondly, the total number of reports on the
link between noise and health problems is not very extensive, at least not in comparison to
the number of reports on a topic such as the link between air pollution and health problems.
Thirdly, noise leads to similar health problems as air pollution. It is therefore difficult to
determine which health problems have been caused by noise and which health problems
have been caused by air pollution. There might even by a synergy between the two
environmental problems. In any case, health problems are more likely to be attributed to air
pollution because of its higher priority.
2.1.3 The subjective label
Apart from the invisible long term effects, noise also has some short term effects that are
much easier to visualise and understand. Noise annoyance is by far the most prominent.
People can for example be annoyed by traffic noise in their streets or by construction noise.
Because the aspect of annoyance is so prominent, it is often the main focus in discussions
and research on noise. For the priority of noise, this is positive and negative at the same
time. On the one hand, it leads to pressure from citizens on local government to amend
certain adverse noise situations. On the other hand, annoyance poses a problem for policy.
The effect of technical measures on the level of noise annoyance is hard to measure at best.
This is due to the fact that noise annoyance is not dependent on acoustical variables but
instead on a number of non-acoustical variables such as the time of day, the frequency of a
noise event, the persons relation to the source, and a feeling of helplessness. Noise
annoyance is determined by emotional reactions instead of by the actual level of sound.
According to a large number of the respondents, this enables policy makers to label noise as
a subjective problem and therefore not a problem that needs to be dealt with by policy
makers.
2.1.4 Conflict with other (economic) interests
Due to the difficulties mentioned in the previous paragraphs and because not everybody is
effected equally by noise, it is not surprising that some authorities choose to pursue other,
often economic interests. Some measures that reduce noise levels drastically, such as
closing a road or reducing the number of airplanes at an airport, are not always acceptable to
(local) authorities because they conflict with other interests that might be perceived as

INTERNOISE 2010 JUNE 13-16 LISBON PORTUGAL

economically important. In such a case, benefits to the majority get priority over the
disadvantages of the few.

2.2 The effectiveness of measures

As has already been discussed in the previous section, it is generally unclear which
measures are effective against noise annoyance. On top of this, technical measures have
also not always been successful in reducing the total level of environmental noise.
Subfactors in this category are: technical measures have sometimes been countered by
other factors (such as an increase in the number of individual noise sources), a lack of real
clarity on a suitable unit for the expression of the effects of noise, the lack of an accepted
legal limit value for noise.

2.2.1 Technical measures have been countered

An obvious approach to tackling the noise problem is to reduce noise levels at the source.
However, due to changes in test conditions it is debatable whether or not this has effectively
led to quieter cars, trains, airplanes, etc. What is clear is that improvements made at the
source have for a significant part been countered by rebound factors such as the increase in
traffic volume. And it is likely that traffic volumes will continue to increase in the coming
years. Furthermore, improvements such as quieter engines and quiet tyres are not
consistently advertised. This will mean that people will not actively include them in their
decision to buy a new automobile. Factors such as cost and performance will probably be
deciding factors. And finally, technical measures that focus on the propagation or the point
of application of noise generally tend to be quite expensive in construction and maintenance.
On top of this, measures such as sound barriers are often seen as an intrusive element in
the landscape, making this a negatively perceived measure. Sound insulation seems to be
the most effective measure against noise annoyance because the measure itself does not
provoke negative associations and is a more visible measure.
2.2.2 Lack of clarity on a suitable unit for the effects of noise
It is very hard to determine the effect of a single measure on noise annoyance because the
annoyance aspect is not dependent on the actual sound level. Therefore, decibels are not a
suitable unit for the expression of these effects. Another unit that is frequently used is the
DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Year) which indicates the number of healthy life years that are
lost due to some adverse effect. In the case of noise, this unit will only be useful when it is
generally accepted that noise can lead to the loss of healthy life years. At the moment this is
not universally the case. Alternatively, noise could be expressed in terms of cost. However, it
is unclear how noise should be monetarised. The lack of a standardised method to
calculate the cost of noise makes it easy to discard a certain calculation done via an
unsupported method of calculation. This also makes it hard to determine the cost-benefit
relations of measures against noise. To summarize, it is probably impossible to gain
acceptance for a unit for the effects of noise when the effects of noise itself are still not
generally accepted.
2.2.3 Lack of a clear limit value
One of the major issues that was mentioned by the respondents was the lack of a clear legal
limit value for noise. Indeed, this lack is what distinguishes the Environmental Noise Directive
from other EU environmental directives. Opinions on the need for a limit value for noise are
divided. Some believe that having one uniform limit value for the whole of the EU would not
be desirable. Because of the large differences in advances on noise abatement between

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Western Europe and Eastern Europe, the limit value would probably not be very ambitious.
After all, it is no use to set a limit value that Eastern European states cant live up to in the
near future. On the other hand, a number of respondents believe that a limit value, strict or
not, is an incentive for policy to act and a useful tool to make noise more visible. Perhaps a
target value or a limit value that is adjusted periodically is a satisfactory compromise.

3. Suggestions
In order to obtain a higher position for noise on the policy and political agenda, we propose to
make a number of connections between different aspects of noise, between different
agendas and between different levels of policy. This will lead to a three dimensional way of
thinking in which the first dimension contains different stakeholders in the field of noise, the
second dimension contains noise in relation to other environmental issues, and the third
dimension contains the various levels of policy. Such three-dimensional thinking might lead
to a paradigm shift from the current situation of thinking about noise as a stand alone issue
towards thinking of noise as part of concepts like quality of life and sustainable transport.
The connections we need to make are:
-

Between noise annoyance and health: a connection between the visibility of noise
annoyance and the less accepted health effects
Between noise and other environmental issues: stressing the combined effects of for
example noise and air pollution, in essence benefiting from the priority of another
environmental issue
Between different levels of policy: in the majority of member states the local level has
been made responsible for complying with the obligations of the END. However, this
level does not always have the means to optimally carry out this task. Assistance
from higher levels of policy would be helpful.
Between the public and policy: making people aware that noise maps and action
plans exist.
With the media: scientists and other noise experts need to increase their visibility and
the attention for noise in the media by also publishing outside of scientific journals in
for example health magazines and ladies magazines. The publication of a story on
the effects of noise in a Swedish womens magazine was quite successful.

The last two connections are essential in increasing the visibility of noise itself as well as of
noise reduction measures. People need to be informed because the effectiveness of noise
measures depends on it. Due to the non-acoustical factors that influence noise annoyance,
people might not be less annoyed after the application of quieter road surfaces unless the
public is actively informed. Past experiences on communicating noise to the public and
recommendations for improvement are provided in the next chapter.

4. Informing the public and affecting politicians through the

public
The recommendation of publishing about noise in ladies and health magazines seems an
easy one. By doing this politicians and policy makers can be reached and hopefully
convinced indirectly. Its assumed that by informing the public the knowledge about noise
and the effects of noise shall increase. However, it is not easy to attract public attention for a

INTERNOISE 2010 JUNE 13-16 LISBON PORTUGAL

while and certainly not for a long time. Interesting the public in such a way that they are
willing to act towards politicians and policy makers is even more difficult. It means that a lot
of obstacles must be overcome such as:
-

The public tends to distrust government

Governmental information isn't understandable and accessible
Identifying target groups and their expectations
Obstacles to be found within the public
Use of the right communication instruments
Information doesn't automatically lead to a change of attitude and behaviour

4.1 Public confidence in government

According to a Dutch report [8] that was published recently, civil society doesnt have great
trust in public government or politicians. In 2003 around 38% of the Dutch people trusted the
government and this percentage has grown to 69%. In other European countries such as
Belgium, Italy, France and even in the United Kingdom and Denmark the scores are
remarkable lower [9]. According to [10] the public doesnt have much confidence in the way
governments are dealing with their environmental tasks. In the Netherlands around 60% of
the people think that governments are not doing their environmental tasks very well. So why
doesnt the public act? Politicians and policy makers are resilient and the public thinks that
they cannot be trusted. A lot of people are not convinced that governments take up signals
sent by the public. Only when using the media, there is some belief to succeed. So most
people remain inactive. Informing the public can be successful. However, it can be
unsuccessful as well, especially when it comes to changing public behaviour. It is estimated
that approximately 40 % of public campaigns fail in their objective. An example of a
successful campaign in the Netherlands was the so called BOB campaign. BOB stands for a
person who doesnt drink alcohol on a night out to be able to safely drive home his friends.
According to Swankhuisen et al. [11] the reasons for its success were:
-

nice and funny commercial

easy to understand message
rather positive context
believable situation / recognizable
sympathetic actors are casted

These elements are potentially crucial in informing and communicating with the public.

4.2 From belief to disbelief

A large portion of the public was affected by the messages of the ambassadors Bill Clinton
and Al Gore. With the Clinton Climate Initiative and the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' they
both convinced a lot of people that global warming is threatening human life. This made
climate change visible and imaginable for a lot of people. In contrast, the total percentage
of people that believe that climate change is real is decreasing. The percentage of the Dutch
public who believe that humans are responsible has dropped from 80 to 60 %. In the USA
this is 55 % [12]. So it's hard to make people belief permanently in climate change and
probably harder to let them belief that noise is harmful for human health.

INTERNOISE 2010 JUNE 13-16 LISBON PORTUGAL

4.3 Understandable and accessible governmental information

A lot of information provided by the government is hard to understand. It often contains too
much information, difficult sentences and jargon. Furthermore, it is often one sided, biased
and not tuned towards target groups. During the public presentations of the Noise Maps and
Noise Action Plans it became clear that people could understand the Noise Maps with much
effort. The colours and the legend used make them easy to understand. However, what the
noise levels expressed in L DEN and LNIGHT really meant for them personally was not at all
clear. The same goes for health effects and monetary issues such as the devaluation of their
houses due to noise. If government wants people to understand these maps they should
inform people in laymans terms about noise, its effects and the reasoning behind the noise
maps and action plans. Why for example do the maps only take into account noise produced
by industry, traffic, rail and aviation? Other sources of noise produced by for example
neighbours, loading and offloading trucks or scooters passing by, are the main source of
noise annoyance. Furthermore, the accuracy and details of the Noise Map are often
misunderstood because of its strategic nature. People expected numerous solutions to tackle
the problems but the majority of the Action Plans published until now, hardly contain concrete
solutions. They only contain vague formulations such as: 'Noise will be reduced by traffic
measures, quiet road surfaces etc'. In many cases the Action Plans aren't SMART 1. On top
of this, government officials are often reluctant to provide the public with more information
because they dont have the mandate or knowledge.

4.4 Obstacles to be found within the public

Large cities with less affluent districts are often exposed to high environmental burdens. 'The
poor are living downwind, downstream and downhill' a report of the World Health
Organisation [13] mentioned. Or said by DeLeon [14] "Those who are most often affected by
policies in terms of new or revised programs are the least often consulted". These districts
contain large numbers of less fortunate people. They cannot be reached easily because of
their language handicap, different cultural background and other daily concerns. This part of
civil society, which can be a rather large part of the urban community, is doubly handicapped
because of the so called knowledge gap [15]. High(er) educated people are more capable to
find the information they need. The gap is still widening. It's the ultimate challenge to reach to
people that are less fortunate and are at the same time effected the most by noise.

4.5 Modern means of communication and its limitations

Directive 90/313/EC [16] about public accessibility of environmental information states that
information must be clear, understandable, accessible and the most appropriate channels of
communication must be used. This doesn't mean that publishing noise maps and action
plans on the internet complies with this. In the Netherlands 90% of all households is
connected to the internet. In other countries2 this percentage is much lower. Furthermore,
the majority of the 10 % of non-connected people in The Netherlands are lowly educated
people. Sometimes, even for the connected, the noise maps of a city cannot easily be
found. Often the noise map is deeply hidden within the municipal website or not even
available at all. It is not clear whether or not this is deliberate. Whatever the case, the

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time bounded
According to www.comscore.com the average for Europe amounts 65%, the lowest on the ranking are Serbia
(30%) and Bulgaria (37%). Greece and Romania are scoring low as well (38%).
2

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information on the internet should be improved and it should certainly not be the only means
of communicating the noise maps in order to reach certain target groups.

4.6 Affecting and involving the public, a missed chance

Unfortunately, the opportunity to involve the public in the process of the noise maps and
action plans wasnt taken. Although the directive doesn't impose on the competent bodies to
engage or involve the public, this was the opportunity to involve the public in making noise
policies and / or in affecting those policies. The END says in article 9.1: 'Member States shall
ensure that the strategic noise maps they have made, and where appropriate adopted, and
the action plans they have drawn up are made available and disseminated to the public in
accordance with relevant Community legislation, in particular Council Directive 90/313/EEC
of 7 June 1990 on the freedom of access to information on the environment(13), and in
conformity with Annexes IV and V to this Directive, including by means of available
information technologies'.
Article 2 states that the information must be clear, understandable and accessible and
elsewhere it is stated that the most suitable channels must be used to inform the public.
The WG-AEN3 has drafted a report [17] which provides a lot of handles and
recommendations to governments for informing the public. But just like an earlier report 4 this
report is hardly known by municipal officials. The late date of publishing (March 2008) could
play a role as well. This report recommends engagement of the public where the END
doesn't say anything about stakeholder participation. During these presentations, a chance to
involve the politicians was missed. Only in a few cases politicians were present during the
meetings to inform the public.

4.7 Relation between informing and change of attitude and behaviour

Knowing that only 5% of our behaviour is planned, one can imagine that affecting it is not
that simple. People are more or less unaware of their behaviour. An example of automatic
behaviour is the commuter that chooses to travel by car every day. This is probably only
planned behaviour in the beginning. After a while this person doesnt consider alternatives
anymore. Automatic behaviour is very difficult to change. It can be done by constructing
impediments that are inescapable such as a ban or a physical obstacle such as a road block.
Social validation, by using social networks or leaders with a strong opinion can also be
effective. Using priming5 can be an effective instrument as well. By referring to colours,
fragrances etc. people's behaviour can be affected. However, even when we succeed to
change the attitude of people by telling them that something is unwise or bad for their health,
people can persist or fall back in their (former) behaviour.

4.8 Conclusions and recommendations

Increasing the priority for noise on the policy and political agenda will be a long term process.
In chapter 3 it was suggested to make a number of connections that will lead to a new three
dimensional way of thinking about noise, seeing noise as an integral part of concepts such

3
4

WG-AEN stands for Working Group on the Assessment of Exposure to Noise

Good Practice Guide of Noise Mapping

Priming refers to a increased sensitivity to certain stimuli due to prior experience. Because priming it believed to occur
outside of conscious awareness, it is different from memory that relies on the direct retrieval of information. Direct retrieval
utilizes explicit memory, while priming relies on implicit memory. Research has also shown that the affects of priming can
impact the decision-making process (Jacoby, 1983).

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as quality of life and sustainable transport. The first dimension contains different
stakeholders, the second contains several environmental issues and the third contains
various levels of policy. This requires connections between the annoyance aspect and health
aspect of noise, between noise and other environmental issues, between different levels of
policy, between policy and the public and connections with the media.
The last two of these types of connections are also essential for increasing the visibility of
the issue of noise itself as well as of noise reduction measures. People need to be informed,
otherwise noise reduction measures will have limited effect. The END provided policy with a
perfect opportunity to communicate noise to the public. Unfortunately, this process and
informing the public about noise in general, has been largely unsuccessful. We propose the
following recommendations for improvement:
-

Informing people by publishing in ladies and health magazines could be beneficial in

order to inform people about noise and its meaning on their daily lives.
One has to realise that reaching certain target groups such as people with a low
education, (probably the group that is effected the most by noise), is difficult. This
groups have to be identified in advance in order to be able to specifically target them.
Publishing information on a website is simply not enough.
Knowledge of noise and its effects doesn't automatically mean that people can be
mobilised to act towards politicians and policy makers;
Governments must communicate with the public interactively through joint fact finding
to raise more confidence and support among the public; it's important to include
management of false expectations;
It would be helpful to include in the END, the recommendation to communicate with
the public interactively;
Information for the public must be attractive, distinguished, compact, concrete,
structured and well dosed.

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[17]

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Presenting Noise Mapping Information to the Public, WG-AEN , March 2008

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