Abstract
We analyze the awareness of the trouble and annoyance of inhabitants within the twenty meters limit of a trunk road through free response data, and compare it with that beyond three hundreds meters from such a trunk road. In the analysis of free response data, we examine the frequency of description words and employ the cluster analysis. By analyzing the frequency of description words in free response data by inhabitants along a trunk road, we found that the word "severe" is used far more frequently than "noisy" in the expression to describe traffic noise. To this usage of the word "severe" in the description of annoying noise, little attention has been paid by researchers of the acoustic environment. By cluster analysis of the free response data along a trunk road, the followings are made clear: Firstly, the residents' awareness is occupied by the overwhelming effect of trouble and annoyance of trunk road traffic, leaving little room for other kind of trouble and annoyance. Secondly, residents recognize pollution phenomena from such a road not individually but as a whole. Finally, the qualitative difference of expression of the same kind of trouble and annoyance shows an unemotional and objective way of description and a vivid and picturesque one.
