3.1. Overview of Variables Used in the Analyses and Descriptive Statistics
Detailed information concerning the sound measurements is synthesized in
Table 1. As previously indicated, noise measurements were carried out at eight different locations, designated by the initials of the village name (“CD”, “L”, “VC” and “VP”) followed by “high” and “low”, corresponding to distinct points in each village, at a high and a low location, respectively. Although the registered WT SPL in
Table 1 are relatively lower than those reported in other studies (for example, [
5,
28]), it should be noted that the results from different studies cannot be directly compared with one another due to different measurement conditions and possibly different weather situations at the time of the measurements.
The analyses carried out in the present study encompass several types of variables, including variables related to sound and annoyance (noise perception), and to the respondents’ opinion about WT, the dwelling characteristics, and the respondents’ personal characteristics. A rigorous analysis of the representativeness of the sample is not possible due to lack of information. However, comparing the sample composition with the latest census information available for the biggest village considered in the study (Varzea Cova), it is possible to conclude that the former compares well with the population with respect to age, percentage of females, and schooling years (in 2011, the average age was 48.86, the average number of schooling years was 4.96%, and 51.2% of the inhabitants were female). The definition of the variables used in the analyses as well as the descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) both for the overall sample and stratified by individuals’ response to the revealed information question are shown in
Table 2.
The overall sample is composed of 80 observations, 29 of which correspond to individuals that did spend or have considered spending resources in retrofitting their houses (R = 1), and 51 belonged to the group that did not spend or did not considered spending such resources (R = 0). A number of differences between these two groups of respondents can be detected. Namely, the proportion of individuals annoyed by wind turbine noise both inside (indoors) and outside (outdoors) their dwelling is higher amongst those who spent or have considered spending resources on house retrofitting (52% and 59% in group R = 0, compared to 22% and 20% in group R = 1, indoor and outdoor annoyance, respectively). The proportion of individuals holding negative opinions about WT (i.e., that they are inefficient, unnecessary, and/or have a negative impact on the landscape) is also higher amongst the latter group of individuals. In addition, WT are visible from the dwelling of 76% of the respondents who have not spent nor considered spending resources on house retrofitting, but they are visible from the dwelling of all of the individuals who responded affirmatively to the revealed information question. Likewise, the proportion of individuals reporting being sensitive to noise is higher amongst the latter group of individuals. Conversely, the proportion of individuals benefiting economically from the WT is substantially lower amongst this group.
3.2. Statistical Determinants of Noise Annoyance and Local Residents’ Decision to Take Action
The statistical analyses herein consider the
indoors and
outdoors reported annoyance separately since these two annoyance metrics were collected from the applied questionnaire and because it is possible that they can be significantly different. For example, Pedersen and Waye [
20] report that only a low number of respondents were annoyed indoors by wind turbine noise. Conversely, Hubbard and Sheppard [
29] and Thorne [
30] state that people exposed to wind turbine noise inside buildings experience a very different acoustic environment than do those outside, and may be more disturbed by the noise inside their homes than they would be outside namely because the acoustic energy from wind turbines generates structural vibrations and is capable of resonating houses.
In each case, selection of the independent variables in the noise annoyance equation is determined by theoretical considerations and previous research findings. Annoyance due to wind turbine noise is thought to depend on the intensity (SPL) of the sound produced by WT to which individuals are exposed to, and on a number of attitudinal, situational and individual factors. In particular, some research findings suggest that noise-induced annoyance is positively influenced by negative opinions about the source itself [
31,
32]. Annoyance has also been found to be positively correlated with WT visibility from the respondents’ dwellings and with a negative attitude towards the visual impact of WT on the landscape [
33,
34,
35]. Likewise, visibility and distance from the noise source have been found significant by other authors [
36]. This negative attitude is enhanced when the landscape is considered of high aesthetic quality [
37]. In addition, noise annoyance has also been shown to depend on terrain and urbanization [
38]. Other situational factors possibly influencing annoyance responses are the age of the individuals’ dwellings and the topography between the WT and the location of the dwellings. Housing conditions may affect sound transmission and have been previously found to be negatively correlated with the health perception of their residents [
39]. As with housing conditions, topography has the potential to alter the auditory sensation and perception of sound pressure levels by, for example, modifying sound propagation, its variability, and/or the sound quality of turbine noise [
40].
It should be acknowledged that previous studies have also shown that many other acoustic factors (not considered in the current study) may also play a role on annoyance, especially noise characteristics such as its spectral content or amplitude modulation. In the same way, the noise source visibility issue can be framed in the context of a wider analysis, with emphasis on the way it is perceived and understood by the individual, the so-called soundscape analysis. Previous research in this domain has demonstrated that soundscapes can be described by other equally important descriptors, beyond noise annoyance, e.g., the pleasantness, perceived affective quality, restorativeness, soundscape quality and appropriateness, to name a few [
41]. Due to the adopted approach in this study, it should be recognized that the concepts of noise annoyance and the broader concept of soundscape were not fully explored here.
Moreover, evidence shows that annoyance prevalence is also related to personal characteristics of the respondents such as their noise sensitivity, age, and economic conditions, including the possibility to benefit economically from WT [
33]. Relatedly, a recent study concluded that support of commercial wind energy depends largely on a belief that wind farms will provide economic benefits to the community [
42].
With the exception of two identifying restrictions, these attitudinal, situational and individual factors are also included as control variables in the revealed information equation. The first natural identifying restriction is wind turbine visibility from the respondents’ dwellings, since it does not vary with their response to the revealed information question. Similarly, the second identifying restriction is the respondent’s opinion concerning the visual impact of WT on the landscape. Maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the bivariate probit models are reported in
Appendix B, and indicate that, taken together, the included explanatory variables are statistically significant determinants of the considered dependent variables. In addition, the estimate of
ρ is negative and statistically different from zero in both the
Outdoors and
Indoors model, implying that the unobserved factors affecting annoyance responses are negatively correlated with those affecting revealed information responses, which vindicates
per se the use of the structural estimation techniques adopted in the present analyses.
The estimated marginal effects of the explanatory variables in the two equations of the
Indoors model are given in
Table 3. The results show that, ceteris paribus, a unit SPL increase enhances the probability of being annoyed by WT noise by 29.3 percentage points (pp). The results also show that annoyance mediates the relationship between SPL and noise reaction as assessed by revealed information responses. In particular, individuals who feel annoyed by wind turbine noise are 38.9 pp more likely to spend resources on house retrofitting than their counterparts who are not annoyed by it at comparable SPL. Noise-induced annoyance, however, does not fully mediate the relationship between sound intensity and noise reaction. In fact, SPL exert an independent positive effect on the likelihood that individuals spend resources on house retrofitting. The total effect of a unit SPL increase on this likelihood is estimated at 23.2 pp, where 9.3 pp is the direct effect on the likelihood itself, and 13.9 pp is the indirect effect from the probability of being annoyed attributable only to the unit increase in SPL.
The general opinion of the respondents about WT does not seem to have a significant influence in the reported noise annoyance or in the probability to spend more resources improving their houses. However, the results indicate that those respondents who think that WT are inefficient have a higher probability of being annoyed by noise and, through this effect, to be more willing to spend resources on their houses. Actually, individuals who think that WT are inefficient or very inefficient are 73.1 pp more likely to feel annoyed than those who think otherwise, and this also has an indirect effect on the probability to invest in the houses which is 31.1 pp higher for these individuals.
Falling under the heading of “Dwelling characteristics”, all the variables intended to capture situational factors exert a positive and significant effect on self-reported noise annoyance, and through this effect, on the likelihood that individuals spend resources on house retrofitting. In fact, and in line with previous findings by Pedersen [
3] and Pedersen and Larsman [
43], the results indicate that WT visibility from the respondents’ dwellings increases the probability of being annoyed by WT noise by 58.2 pp. Likewise, all else the same, respondents living in dwellings located at a “high” point in the village are 57.3 pp more likely to feel annoyed by WT noise than their counterparts living in dwellings located at a “low” point in the village. This result provides strong empirical evidence to the conjecture (e.g., [
38,
40]) that topography impacts the auditory sensation and perception of sound pressure levels, a finding that to the best of our knowledge has not been previously clearly empirically corroborated. The overall effect of WT visibility and topography on individuals’ willingness/necessity to spend resources on house retrofitting is estimated at 21.9 pp and 72.5 pp, respectively.
Ceteris paribus, the effect of the dwellings’ age on self-reported noise annoyance, albeit statistically significant, is small in magnitude, with a unit increase in this variable leading to an increase in the probability of annoyance by 0.7 pp, and to an indirect increase on the likelihood of investing resources on house retrofitting by 0.2 pp. The results also show that both the direct and the overall effect of this variable on house retrofitting efforts are statistically insignificant, a finding that is somewhat surprising given that one would expect that older houses would need more intervention.
Inspection of the results concerning the effects of respondents’ personal characteristics reveals that, ceteris paribus, none of the included variables has a statistically significant overall impact on house retrofitting efforts. However, all things being equal, female and unemployed individuals are, respectively, 41.3 pp and 30.0 pp significantly more likely to feel annoyed by WT noise than their male and non-unemployed counterparts. Consistent with previous results reported in the literature (e.g., [
3,
33]), noise sensitivity significantly increases the probability of self-reported annoyance with WT noise by 41.7 pp. Moreover, the results show that, through the effect on annoyance, noise-sensitive individuals are 18.4 pp more likely to incur in house retrofitting efforts than individuals who do not regard themselves as sensitive to noise. As expected from previous research findings, individuals benefiting economically from the noise source are less likely to report being annoyed by it, but unlike results reported by Pedersen et al. [
33], this effect is not statistically significant at less than the 5% significance level. Importantly, however, this variable exerts a negative and statistically significant indirect effect on house retrofitting efforts. In fact, the results show that, all else the same, respondents who benefit economically from the WT are 12.6 pp less likely to adopt mitigation measures than those who do not benefit from it, a finding that might reflect attempts from the former to curtail any resentment from their non-profiting neighbors thereby hindering any local objections to these projects.
Turning to the analysis of the
Outdoors model, the results displayed in
Table 4 reveal that the estimates in this model differ little from those in the
Indoors model both in sign and statistical significance. Importantly, a noticeable exception to this observation concerns the mean impact of SPL on the probability of annoyance perceived outside the dwelling which is here statistically insignificant. This result stands in stark contrast with the finding concerning the mean impact of SPL on the probability of annoyance perceived indoors and provides strong evidence supporting the claim that wind turbine noise causes greater annoyance in the indoor environment which, in turn, may induce sleep disturbance, stress and other illnesses.
Concerning the impact of outdoors annoyance on noise reaction, the results show that individuals who are annoyed by WT noise when spending time outdoors at the dwelling are 57.3 pp more likely to adopt mitigation measures than those individuals who do not experience outdoors annoyance. As previously found in the
Indoors results, however, noise-induced outdoors annoyance does not fully mediate the relationship between sound intensity as measured by SPL and noise reaction. As seen from the results in
Table 4, SPL has an independent positive effect on the likelihood that individuals spend resources on house retrofitting, with a unit SPL increase enhancing this likelihood by 13.5 pp. The total effect of a unit SPL increase on this likelihood is estimated at 17.9 pp, a figure that is lower than the value found in the
Indoors model due to the lower indirect (i.e., through its effect on outdoor annoyance) impact of SPL increases on house retrofitting decisions, which is here estimated at 4.4 pp.
Taken together, these results are generally in line with existing empirical literature concerning the effects of individuals’ characteristics and their opinions about WT on self-reported annoyance due to wind turbine noise. The results also uncover previously untested relationships between topography, noise-induced annoyance, and noise reaction. In particular, the results suggest that terrain separating windfarms from residential property may attenuate the auditory sensation and perception of SPL at comparable turbine visibility conditions and distance, a finding that may account for the mixed results in the literature concerning the impact of WT noise measured in different locations. Furthermore, our results provide the first corroborative evidence for the proposition that people are more disturbed by wind turbine noise inside their homes than they are outside. Notwithstanding, the results also show that annoyance felt both at indoors and outdoors settings mediates the relationship between SPL and noise reaction. Importantly, a key finding from the results in
Table 3 and
Table 4 is that noise-induced annoyance does not fully mediate the relationship between sound intensity and noise reaction, with SPL acting as an independent contributor to individuals’ decision to adopt mitigation measures.