Influence of Soundscapes on Perception of Safety and Social Presence in an Open Public Space

This chapter addresses the effect of different soundscapes on the perception of safety and the feeling of social presence in an urban open space. The investigation was conducted through the virtual reproduction of different scenarios submitted to participants' evaluation through a laboratory test. A subjective assessment test with a three-level factorial design was implemented in which participants had to rate 18 different audio-visual scenarios with respect to their safety and social presence perception. The scenarios presented three different views of a pedestrian passage in which different acoustic conditions were tested, namely the presence of traffic noise barrier and of classical or jazz music background. The results of statistical analyses showed that background music improved the perception of safety and the social presence feeling. In detail, jazz music was the stimulus that reported higher scores in these evaluations, with respect to classical music. Finally, music influence on social presence resulted to be significantly higher for female participants than for male ones.