Sensory Heritage Is Vital for Sustainable Cities: A Case Study of Soundscape and Smellscape at Wong Tai Sin

Abstract

Sensory heritage encompasses culturally valued practices, rituals, and everyday activities experienced through the senses. While sight often dominates, hearing and smelling are generally more immersive and pervasive. Soundscape research is a well-established field within urban studies; however, smellscape remains insufficiently recognised. This study is part of Multimodal Hong Kong, a project aimed at documenting sensory cultural heritage across the city by capturing the complex interplay between soundscape, smellscape, urban experiences, everyday activities, and memory. We investigated the multisensory environment at Wong Tai Sin Temple through acoustic measurements and perceptual ratings of soundscape and smellscape across 197 locations within and around the site. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with visitors (N = 54, 15,015 words of transcript), which were analysed using content analysis and natural language processing. The results indicate that elevated noise levels mainly arise from human voices and pipe music within the temple compound, as well as traffic noise in the surrounding area. The smell of incense dominates near the temple altars, whereas natural, grassy odours prevail in the adjacent park. Interview responses confirm that incense burning constitutes a traditional religious practice forming a distinctive olfactory marker for Chinese temples, but it is also perceived as having adverse health implications. This study contributes to the growing body of sensory heritage research, underscoring the importance of both soundscape and smellscape in fostering culturally inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable urban environments.

1. Introduction

In cities such as Hong Kong, there is an ongoing tension between human traditions, technologically driven aspirations embodied in ‘smart cities’, and natural contextual constraints such as climate change. Compounded by the city’s high population density, these challenges impose significant conditions on its sustainable urban development. While security, public health, and the economy rank highest among the concerns of residents and decision-makers, issues such as general well-being, cultural identity, and heritage are also prominent—particularly given their continuous interaction with more fundamental and quantifiable matters. Much remains to be done to raise awareness of the value these qualities contribute.

Culturally valued urban spaces typically embody an “intertwined tangible-intangible duality, expressed both as physical constructions and as a set of social, traditional practices” [1]. Within this framework, sensory heritage is of vital importance. The concept traces its origins to sensory history and anthropology [2,3,4], and multisensory approaches have gained increasing significance within heritage studies [5,6,7]. This body of research conceptualises sensory heritage building upon two well-established categories: tangible and intangible heritage. Tangible heritage pertains to physical artefacts in the built environment, emphasising “architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape” [8]. Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) [9] encompasses any “non-corporeal manifestation of tradition-based creativity that reflects the community’s social or cultural identity. It includes … the social, intellectual and cultural processes that … have made possible the development of a distinct cultural tradition whose preservation and protection is important” [10]. In Hong Kong, these forms of heritage fall under the respective auspices of the Antiquities and Monuments Office and the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office (see [11] for further discussion).

However, these frameworks have been criticised [12,13] for an inherent hierarchisation of the senses, whereby items appreciable by sight (e.g., monuments, bridges, dance performances) are prioritised over those accessible through touch (e.g., sculptures, textiles) or hearing (e.g., soundscapes), and these in turn are prioritised over smell or taste. The concept of sensory heritage captures something that transcends the UNESCO definitions, which are framed in terms of physical objects and tradition-based practices. To begin identifying what this ‘thing’ might be, we may acknowledge that the specific urban sites valued by a community combine both physically persistent and ephemeral qualities. Two observations highlight gaps in the definitions outlined above. Firstly, some aspects of the experience within physical environments—for example, the sounds and smells they contain—may be ephemeral, insofar as the individual objects from which they originate may quickly vanish, yet these qualities can be continuously replenished to create a long-term, steady-state presence. Hence, sounds and smells can assume a physical character [14]. Secondly, the actions producing those sounds and smells might not be entirely intentional (unlike the clearly intentional intangible cultural heritage exemplified by, say, a traditional dance performance), but rather side-products of various activities, whether ‘cultural’ or otherwise (cf. semi-designed environments [15]). The actions themselves may be mundane or everyday occurrences, but importantly, the perception of such sounds and smells can come to hold significance—potentially over time—for a community. Thus, sounds and smells acquire a cultural character. Therefore, the concept of sensory heritage is both novel and essential for understanding valued urban sites.

The focus here on sounds and smells is undoubtedly a simplification compared to the full multisensory complexity experienced in natural environments. As noted above, vision plays a primary role in the appreciation of cultural heritage, and intermodal relationships among visual, auditory, and olfactory senses combine with significant effect [16,17]. Visual and cognitive factors can dominate smell perception; for example, a notable experiment found that the smell of white wine dyed red was described using red wine descriptors by students of œnology [18].

Throughout our lives, multisensing is the norm, and lived experiences are encoded in multisensory memory. There is ample evidence that smells can trigger episodic memory recall [19], and non-olfactory stimuli can elicit smell memories, whether accurate or not [20]. If a smell is not part of a lived experience (forming a true memory), it might be regarded as a projection of an imagined scent [17,21]. Both smells and sounds can facilitate spatial recall through activities such as sketching or clay-making, thereby imparting a sense of tangibility to recalled memories [22].

Inching towards a definition of sensory heritage, we draw on research in urban soundscape and smellscape. The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) defines soundscape as a “perceptual construct, related to a physical phenomenon. [It is the] acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context” [23]. Soundscape can have positive cultural value as well as negative impact on community health. Similarly, smellscape is the perceived olfactory environment, which arises from a complex mixture of volatile compounds. Although smell has long been part of human experience and informal inquiry for centuries, systematic smellscape research only began to emerge in the 1980s [24,25,26]. As Bembibre notes, “the significance of smell in connection with heritage is rarely recognised. This is caused by (1) fragmented knowledge of the sensory worlds of the past and the present, (2) the low awareness of the importance of smells and olfaction in intangible heritage practices, and (3) the lack of adequate methods to identify, record and safeguard smells” [4]. Bearing these challenges in mind, we tentatively define sensory heritage as the sum total of culturally valued sensorial experiences of a community—manifested as sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures—enabled through practices, rituals, and everyday activities, along with associated narratives and memories.

Sensory heritage is beginning to be recognised in national legislation. France’s “Maurice the Rooster” law [27] aims to safeguard specific environmental sounds and smells (patrimoine sensoriel sur les sons et odeurs) [28]. This law emphasises the importance of rural traditions and sensory experiences as integral elements of France’s cultural identity. To develop a robust legal framework for sensory heritage, policy research should build not only on existing legislation that regulates nuisances such as noise and malodour but also seek to identify the valued sensory elements—positive sounds and smells—that local communities consider important to protect and promote for their cultural and social benefits.

Sensory heritage is a vital component of people’s connection to their environment, both present and past, mediated through memory, stories, and history. While the concept need not be confined to a strict definition, greater awareness and emphasis on it can yield broader economic benefits. Everyday activities and narratives shape individual and collective identity, potentially enhancing the lived experiences of communities. To illustrate how sensory heritage can be understood as the intersection of everyday practices, legislative frameworks, soundscape, smellscape, built heritage, and intangible cultural heritage (ICH), please refer to the schematic overview in Figure 1.

With the present case study, we place the spotlight on Wong Tai Sin Temple, a unique site that is simultaneously representative of Chinese temples within Hong Kong’s urban fabric, intertwining culture, religion, tourism, and sensory experiences. Our approach was a mixed-methods one. The first set of research questions addressed the descriptive characteristics of the chosen site: What is Wong Tai Sin’s place within the physical cityscape? What role does it play in the cultural landscape? How does it contribute to shaping the city’s identity? What is the nature of its acoustic environment, and how is the soundscape perceived? How can its smellscape be effectively characterised?

Measurements and observations were complemented by interviews with visitors from diverse backgrounds to gain a deeper understanding of sensory heritage from multiple stakeholder perspectives. Through this, we explored how people relate sensory perceptions to cultural practices: Which specific sounds and smells contribute to the overall appreciation of the site? How do soundscape and smellscape relate to, shape, and inform cultural and religious practices? Finally, we posed questions to contextualise the study: What broader conclusions can be drawn from Wong Tai Sin that apply to other sites in Hong Kong and beyond? How might soundscape and smellscape be harnessed to support the development of sensory heritage policy?

1.1. Context

The term ‘Chinese temples’ refers to places of worship for Chinese religions, including folk religion, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. In Cantonese, the main language of Hong Kong, terms like 廟 (miu6 in Jyutping romanization) or 寺廟 (zi6 miu6) are used. A liberal definition would also include monasteries 觀 (gun3), nunneries 庵 (am1), and shrines built for religious purposes, even if they are strictly speaking not temples in the context of Mandarin or Cantonese languages. The legal definition of Hong Kong’s Chinese Temples Ordinance follows the more liberal usage of the term [29].

There are more than 300 registered Chinese temples; the largest grouping is managed by The Chinese Temples Committee, established in 1928. Most temples were built before the 1950s on sites that were originally on seafronts or grounds relatively empty and far from residential areas. With the city’s extensive urban development, they are now typically surrounded by residential, commercial, and industrial buildings [13,30,31]. Today, many local residents are secularised, and attending Chinese temples might for them be more an expression of respect for tradition, which is an important matter, rather than an activity borne out of religious fervour [32].

1.2. Site Characteristics

One of the oldest and largest Chinese temples in Hong Kong is Wong Tai Sin Temple 黃大仙祠 (wong4 daai6 sin1 ci4; henceforth abbreviated as WTS). The name translates as ‘Wong’s great immortal shrine’ in honour of a shepherd who, around 2300 years ago, healed the sick and became a Taoist deity. Literally, 黃 means ‘yellow’, which is a common Cantonese name [33]. WTS is situated in the northern part of Kowloon peninsula towards Lion Rock Country Park, shown in Figure 2. The first structures on the site were erected in 1921. Today, the temple compound covers an area of approximately 18,000 m², with multiple buildings including the Main Temple (嗇色園黃大仙祠 sik1 sik1 jyun4 wong4 daai6 sin1 ci4), water features, and a park, Good Wish Garden (從心苑 cung4 sam1 jyun2). The architecture is traditional, with red pillars, a gold-coloured roof with blue friezes, yellow latticework, and multi-coloured carvings. The distinct colours can be seen in the aerial photo in Figure 3.

WTS is a well-known institution that, in many respects, exemplifies traditional Chinese temples. Originally serving local residents, WTS has since attained such prominence that the surrounding urban area has adopted its name. Currently, it ranks among the ten most significant tourist destinations in Hong Kong, attracting over three million visitors annually. Consequently, diverse groups of people engage with the temple in varied ways, coexisting within the same establishment. The sounds and smells at WTS emanate from distinct practices that are typical for Chinese temples (such as music, ritual drumming, and incense burning), various other human activities (crowd voices and sounds from traffic or construction), and from nature. Whilst these sounds and smells form an integral part of cultural and religious expressions, they may in some cases bring nuisance or even negative health impacts (such as respiratory diseases) [30,34].

With more than 10,000 visitors each day, WTS is a prominent and bustling shrine, renowned for its claim to “make every wish come true upon request” 有求必應 (jau5 kau4 bit1 jing3). The photos in Figure 4 and Figure 5 give an impression of its colours, layout, and activities. The temple is unique in that it embraces three major religions—Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—with halls dedicated to deities from each, such as the Three Saints Hall 三聖堂 (saam3 sing3 tong4), which dates from 1972. The complex is managed by the religious charitable organisation Sik Sik Yuen 嗇色園 (sik1 sik1 jyun4), promoting its function as a symbol of Hong Kong identity. WTS is notable for being the only temple in Hong Kong authorised to conduct Taoist wedding ceremonies, and its ‘beliefs and customs’ have been listed as an intangible cultural heritage of China [35,36].

2. Materials and Methods

The mixed-methods approach employed in this study involved multiple steps. To give a better understanding of the process, Figure 6 illustrates the overall structure and sequence from field data collection via analysis and modelling to integrated interpretation.

2.1. Field Data Collection

Acoustic measurements, audiovisual recordings, soundscape and smellscape ratings, GPS location, timestamp, and observational remarks were annotated at each location using a field protocol in QuestionPro. We noted temperature, rainfall, and air quality for each day of visit. Data collection followed best practices [1,37,38,39], including the capture of 360° video and 3D audio (first-order Ambisonics) at many of the locations; however, these recordings are not part of the present study.

Figure 6 gives an overview of the temple site indicating the main function of buildings and open areas. Note that only those in the centre (Park with water features, Divination outlets, Main Temple, Prayer area, Secondary temple, Open area) are within the WTS compound proper, surrounded by various zones and transport (Road, Pedestrian road, Construction sites, Temporary housing, Plaza, Highway, MTR, Shopping mall, Plaza, Residential highrise).

2.2. Acoustic Measures

Sound pressure level (Level-equivalent A-weighted and C-weighted SPL) measurements were made with an iTestMic2 connected to the ‘SPL Pro’ app on iPhone and, in some cases, a Type 2 SPL meter. Before field collection commenced, the microphone gains of all SPL meters were calibrated using an Extech 407744 Sound Calibrator.

2.3. Soundscape Ratings

Pleasantness, Eventfulness, and Sound type were estimated following recommendations in the International Organisation for Standardisation [40]. Our protocol used nine-step Likert scales for the eight unipolar scales underpinning Pleasantness and Eventfulness (labelled −4 = Strongly disagree, −2 = Somewhat disagree, 0 = Neither agree nor disagree, 2 = Somewhat agree, 4 = Strongly agree). Note that Pleasantness and Eventfulness are construed as two orthogonal bipolar dimensions, calculated from ratings on eight unipolar scales [41,42]. For the five Sound types (Traffic noise, Fan noise, Other noise, Sounds from human beings, Natural sounds), 9-step Likert scales were similarly used (labelled 0 = Do not hear at all, 2 = Only a little, 4 = Moderately, 6 = A lot, 8 = Dominates completely).

2.4. Smellscape Ratings

For on-site smellscape ratings, we started with a ‘smellwheel’ [43], which we had used in previous works [13,17]. For the present case study, we operationalised a set of smell rating scales proposed by Zarzo [44]. To judge the limitations in their applicability to the present application in the field, we briefly describe their design.

Humans possess a physiological capacity to detect and distinguish a vast number of smells. However, people’s ability to identify and describe individual smells or complex mixtures is relatively limited [20]. Over forty years ago, Dravnieks and colleagues [45,46] compiled an extensive ‘Smell Atlas’ assigning hedonic values (pleasantness ratings) to various odorous stimuli, including food items (such as lemon, dill, fried chicken, sour milk), non-food items (such as paint, cat urine, leather, tar), as well as adjectives not tied to specific sources (such as warm, stale, heavy). In 2021, Zarzo [44] re-analysed the atlas with a large sample rating 160 stimuli using 146 descriptors. Through principal component analyses on this high-dimensional dataset, they categorised smell compounds into a parsimonious model of 24 classes, which forms the foundation for our field ratings of environmental smells. The smell items in our field protocol thus fall into three types. Firstly, Pleasant is a single scale to estimate the general pleasantness of the smellscape. Secondly, a set of 10 scales cover non-food smell sources: Floral, Musk, Woody, Camphoraceous, Chemical solvent, Burnt, Sulfidic, Animal, Sickening, and Foetid decay. Thirdly, 13 scales cover food-related smell sources: Fruity, Citrus, Spicy, Balsamic.vanilla, Balsamic.caramel, Herbaceous, Green, Buttery, Nutty, Cooked.meat, Fatty, Fishy, and Sour. The presence of each smell is rated on a 9-step Likert scale (0 = Not present, 2 = A little, 4 = Some, 6 = A lot, 8 = Extremely much). Given the constraints of how the 24-categories model was constructed, the ‘Zarzo scales’ that we have employed here are not expected to provide a detailed description of complex smellscapes in general. It is likely that the characteristics of any specific site may warrant a more narrow or expanded set of descriptors and rating scales, which may be determined before data collection (e.g., based on previous studies) or afterwards (e.g., based on further dimensionality reduction).

To improve the quality of smellscape annotations using this operational protocol, the researchers devoted considerable time to structured ‘olfactometry panel training’, following the recommendations of Belgiorno and collaborators [47]. The team’s individual skills and olfactory sensitivity were developed over approximately 15 training sessions conducted in the laboratory, each lasting about two hours and held roughly every other week, both prior to and during the present case study. Each session comprised several tasks. Firstly, blind smell tests were performed using both self-collected samples (such as soil, fruit, cardboard, coffee powder, etc.) and the ‘scratch-and-sniff’ booklets from the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT; [48]). The accuracy of smell identification was monitored for each member, showing general improvement over time. Secondly, group discussions were held to share and refine descriptive vocabulary and deepen understanding of the smells, their chemical nature, and cultural significance. This training enhanced the members’ awareness of smells and their confidence in conducting smellscape annotations. Thirdly, a web-based interface for in-field smellscape annotation was developed (see Supplementary Materials File S2).

2.5. Interviews

We developed a method for interviewing visitors to gain insight into their experiences, memories, and opinions of Wong Tai Sin Temple [49,50]. Using convenience sampling, members of the research team individually approached a diverse range of visitors, both inside and in the immediate vicinity of the temple (see Figure 4). After obtaining consent to participate and to be audio recorded, a semi-structured interview was conducted covering four thematic areas: the interviewee’s personal background, their expectations, their thoughts and feelings regarding sounds and the soundscape, and their impressions of smells and the smellscape (see Supplementary Materials File S4). The conversation was always held in a language that was comfortable for the participant and within the capability of the researchers (English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Swedish, or French). Interviewees were free to discontinue at any point and were not compensated. Interviews typically lasted four to six minutes. Audio recordings were later processed for clarity and transcribed. By engaging with diverse stakeholders—including local residents and visitors, tourists, worshippers, staff members, and merchants—our aim was to capture a broad spectrum of perspectives on the sounds and smells of WTS, in particular, and of Chinese temples in general.

2.6. Analysis and Topic Modelling

The analysis of interview responses was based on classical content analysis involving interpretative close-reading [51] and natural language processing with BERTopic [52]. Sentiment analysis was conducted both through interpretative ratings by the researchers and automatically using natural language processing tools. During the analysis, our approach alternated between interpretative and computational methods. Details are provided below.

3. Analysis and Results—Field Data

The team visited WTS on eight separate occasions between 18 November 2024 and 20 January 2025, all weekdays in the early afternoon, around three hours each time. The winter weather in Hong Kong was typical: mild, dry, and sunny [53]. The mean temperature was 21 °C (range 18.7 to 25.5 °C) and precipitation was much less than 1 mm/day, except for one day, which received 7.3 mm of rain in the night and morning well before our visit. The Hong Kong Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) is reported on a scale from 1 to 10+ (lower is better). During the three months of our visits, the mean AQHI was 4.2 and at no time (measurements are reported every hour) was it above 6.

Field data were collected at 197 locations inside the temple compound (prayer areas, park, open areas), and on all four sides around it (roads, residential areas, large open plaza outside the main entrance). See Figure 7 and further on. An overview is given in

Table 1. Overview of mean, median, interquartile range, and unit for 13 acoustic, soundscape, and smellscape variables for 197 locations. See the sections below for details.

Type	Variable	Mean	Median	Low Quartile	High Quartile	Unit
Acoustic	$L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$	65.3	65.15	63.2	67.1	dBA, 1 min.
	$L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$	74.33	73.2	71.8	77.1	dBC, 1 min.
Soundscape	Pleasantness	0.01	0.0	−0.1	0.1	−1–+1
	Eventfulness	0.02	0.02	−0.09	0.13	−1–+1
	Humans	4.9	5.0	3.0	6.0	scale 1–9
	Nature	2.86	3.0	1.0	4.0	scale 1–9
	Traffic	3.59	3.0	1.0	6.0	scale 1–9
	Fan	2.25	1.0	1.0	3.0	scale 1–9
	Other	4.88	5.0	3.0	7.0	scale 1–9
Smellscape	Pleasant	2.0	2.0	1.0	3.0	scale 1–9
	FA1. Off-putting/chemical	0.0	−0.27	−0.71	0.52	latent factor
	FA2. Incense	0.0	−0.16	−0.77	0.59	latent factor
	FA3. Grassy	0.0	−0.11	−0.68	0.54	latent factor

.

3.1. Imputing Data

For 18 locations, a SPL meter was not available but smellscape and soundscape ratings were made. Together with one technical dropout, these missing data (9.6% of acoustic measurements) were imputed with median values across the site (since dB is a logarithmic scale). In ratings of the soundscape, usage of the web interface may have caused some of the missing data. Annotators occasionally used the NA option (i.e., ‘no response’) in the sense of ‘Do not hear [this sound type] at all’. Missing data for Sound type (9.0% of ratings on five scales) were imputed by means. The comparatively few missing ratings for Pleasantness and Eventfulness (5.4%, on eight semantic scales) were also imputed by means. In smellscape ratings, the imprecision in our web interface design may have caused most of the missing data (12.8% of ratings on 24 Zarzo scales). The relatively high percentage was likely due to some team members using the NA option (‘no response’) as a shorthand for ‘[this smell is] Not present’. The incoherence in usage within the team was discovered about halfway into the data collection, but not seen as a problem. Therefore, these data points have been imputed as 0 (zero) in the analysis.

3.2. Acoustic Measures

One-third of SPL measurements were made with an iTestMic and two-thirds with a Type 2 m, all calibrated. As can be seen in Figure 8, $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ (1 min.) was on average 66.3 dB, in a range between 54 and 78 dB, and $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ (1 min.) was on average 75.5 dB, in a range between 67 and 90 dB.

Hong Kong’s Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance stipulates a daytime acceptable noise level (ANS) of 60 dBA [54,55]. Within our dataset, no fewer than 92% of the $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ measurements exceeded this threshold, with 58% surpassing 65 dBA. Additionally, the Noise Control Ordinance (NCO) [56] regulates noise generated by construction sites that affect ‘noise sensitive receivers’ such as residential buildings; however, it does not extend to noise originating from locations such as urban parks or temples, nor to external noise penetrating these sites. This regulatory framework contrasts with that of the European Union, where directives aim to protect designated ‘quiet areas’ [57]. For instance, some EU member states or cities enforce substantially lower noise limits, often set at 50 dBA or even 45 dBA [58]. In this context, the noise levels observed in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island are generally markedly higher [39,55].

The geographical distribution of sound levels across the WTS site is illustrated in Figure 9. Compare with the overview of functional areas illustrated in Figure 4. $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ is represented by the left half (light grey) of the filled circles, and $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ by the right half (dark grey). We may note that towards the centre of the illustration, i.e., inside the temple compound, the $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ values are as large as the $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$. This indicates that most of the energy is within the A-weighted profile, which is typical for voices and music. By contrast, towards the upper area near the main road on the north side, $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ is higher than $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$, indicating prevalence of low-frequency energy, which is typical for street noise. The same is true for the lower right side, where we find the overall highest levels close to the highway on the south side.

3.3. Soundscape Ratings

Pleasantness and Eventfulness were calculated from ratings on eight Likert scales [15,59]. The geographical distribution can be seen in Figure 10. We note that Pleasantness was generally higher than Eventfulness in most parts of the temple compound except the road area, main prayer area, the central open area, and the south-east part of the plaza that was near a construction site and highway.

Sound type ratings were made in categories of Humans, Nature, Traffic, Fan, and Other [40]. Note that ‘music’ falls under the last category. A Kruskal–Wallis test showed that there were differences between categories (${\chi }^2$(4) = 201, p ≈ 0 ***). Subsequent two-sample post-hoc tests were conducted with correction for family-wise error inflation. The amounts of Humans and Other were not different (p = 0.69 n.s.), and neither were Nature and Traffic (p = 0.12 n.s.) different. The former pair (Humans + Other) was more common than the latter (Nature + Traffic) with a difference corresponding to 1.7 steps on the Likert rating scale (range: 1 … 9) (${\chi }^2$(1) = 93, p ≈ 0 ***), which was again more common than Fan (${\chi }^2$(1) = 18, p = 0.00002 ***) with a difference of 1.0 steps. See Figure 11 for a boxplot.

Since there were few sounds in the Fan category, it will not be further investigated. While the overall amounts of Traffic and Nature as well as Humans and Other, respectively, did not significantly differ, their geographical distributions are of interest, as can be seen in the maps in Figure 12.

In the left panel, we may observe that traffic sounds dominate in the southern part of the site, near the highway. Natural sounds dominate in the central park area of the temple compound. Despite the proximity to the large road on the north side, traffic noise does not mask natural sound sources mainly thanks to a large difference in elevation and a tall concrete wall. By comparison, traffic noise from the southern highway faces no such obstacles and can penetrate into the main central areas of the temple compound. Note also that there are some sites in the lower right area with lots of nature sounds; these are large flocks of birds in trees aligning the major road. In the right panel, we can compare the distributions of human sound sources, i.e., voices, and ‘other sounds’, which, in this case, are mainly background music pumped out from the many temple compound loudspeakers. The difference in geographical distribution is not as striking as in the previous example. There is a tendency of human sounds dominating the central area in front of the main temple, as well as on the plaza outside the main gate. In the park area, there are comparatively fewer human sounds (typically, voices).

3.4. Smellscape Ratings

The protocol for ratings of environmental smell sources was based on the 24 ‘Zarzo scales’ [44]. See Method section for details, and Supplementary Materials File S3 for plots of each rating scale at the WTS site. Meanwhile, Figure 13 shows boxplots of the ratings on each of the smell scales. It is clear from inspecting the boxplots that several categories of smell, such as Fetid, Fruity, or Fishy, were hardly detected at all, and thus, the corresponding scales would not be useful to describe the smellscape at WTS. This was by no means surprising, and future case studies might want to optimise their smellscape protocol by considering a smaller and more specific subset. We decided to retain the twelve scales with the highest means for the next step in the analysis. They were Burnt (mean = 4.07), Musk (3.6), Woody (3.11), Chemical (2.51), Sulfidic (2.02), Camphor (2.01), Pleasant (2), Herbal (1.91), Floral (1.87), Sour (1.81), Green (1.8), and Sickening (1.68).

Since Pleasant is a non-source-specific rating, we treated it separately. The other 11 retained smell scales (listed above) were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In EFA, latent factors are theoretical constructs that explain the observed data patterns. It assumes that the observed variables are influenced by these unobserved factors plus unique error variance. The goal is to model the structure of relationships and understand the underlying causes or constructs behind the data. For the current data, a Bartlett test (K(10) = 285, p ≈ 0 ***) provides evidence that factor analysis would yield meaningful latent factors. A scree plot comparing actual and simulated data, as well as the Very Simple Structure metric and BIC (Revelle and Rocklin 1979), indicated that three factors would be appropriate. Boot-strapped parallel analysis, comparing actual and simulated factor structures NEEDREF (Horn 1965, Revelle), determined which scales to include in each. The best model with three latent factors explained 40.8% of total variance.

The first latent factor explained 20.8% of the total variance and was mainly defined by ratings on four rating scales: Sulfidic (loading = 0.93), Sour (0.74), Chemical (0.68), and Sickening (0.45). As discussed by Zarzo [44], what these descriptors have in common is that they relate to unpleasant, pungent, or irritating sensory qualities, and most likely unpleasant odours that provoke discomfort. Therefore, the latent factor was labelled Off-putting/chemical. The second latent factor, explaining 16.8%, was defined by Burnt (0.79), Woody (0.78), and Musk (0.45). These descriptors are generally related to warm, natural, and smoky aromas. In the present context, they were clearly reflective of the practice of burning incense, and therefore we labelled this latent factor Incense. The third latent factor explained 10.4% and was defined by the scales Herbal (0.75) and Green (0.53); it was labelled Grassy.

Figure 14 shows the geographical distribution for Pleasant ratings and the three latent factors. We may note that Incense was concentrated in the central areas of the compound, near the three main altars where joss sticks are burned as part of ritual prayers. Off-putting/chemical was prominent in front of the Main Altar, which has the highest concentration of crowds of people. It was also prominent at the periphery near the main road to the north and the highway to the south. Grassy was dominant in the park area to the north. Pleasant smells were not clearly clustered, though appeared to be stronger in the middle open area (somewhat similar to Incense) and in the park (similar to Grassy).

3.5. Canonical Correlation Analysis

We turned to Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) [17,60] to explore the degrees of overall association between the three different kinds or modalities of data that the analysis had yielded so far, i.e., acoustic measurements, soundscape ratings, and smellscape ratings. Like the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) employed in the previous step, CCA is a multivariate dimensionality reduction technique to identify linear combinations of observed variables that represent underlying latent variables (factors or canonical variates). While EFA examines relationships within a single set of variables, CCA compares two sets that may have differing numbers of variables, and finds the projection that accounts for the most of the covariance between the two. The set of canonical correlations indicate the strength of association between two sets of variables. The first canonical correlation captures the strongest linear relationship between the two variable sets and is usually the most important.

The dataset comprised 197 observations, each corresponding to a distinct data collection location at WTS. Acoustic measurements were represented by two variables, namely $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ and $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$. To characterise the soundscape, we included six variables—Pleasantness, Eventfulness, Humans, Nature, Traffic, Other (excluding Fan)—while the smellscape was described by Pleasant alongside the three latent factors, namely Off-putting/chemical, Incense, and Grassy. All analyses were conducted using cancor in R [61].

In the first CCA, we compared acoustic measurements with soundscape ratings. The first canonical correlate was 0.62, pointing to an overall strong relationship. In the pattern of covariances (between the variables of each matrix and the first canonical variate), it was found that loadings were high onto $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ (0.73) and $L{C}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ (0.95) and, at the same time, high onto Traffic (0.86) and medium negatively onto Nature (−0.46). This indicates that noise levels were strongly associated with more Traffic sounds and, to some extent, with fewer Nature sounds as well.

In the next case, we compared acoustic measurements with smellscape ratings. The first canonical correlate was 0.39, indicating a weak relationship. In the pattern of covariances, the loading was high onto $L{A}_{\mathrm{eq}}$ (0.95) and, at the same time, high negatively onto Grassy (−0.73). This indicates that lower noise levels were found at locations with more Grassy smells, but note that the overall association was weak.

Lastly, we compared soundscape and smellscape ratings. The first canonical correlate was 0.64, indicating a strong overall relationship with an interesting pattern of covariances. Loadings were high negatively for Traffic (−0.86) and Other sounds (−0.55, mostly music) and, at the same time, high negatively for Off-putting/chemical smells (−0.89) and medium for Pleasant smells (0.48). The signs for these loadings indicate that locations with more Traffic and Other sounds also had more Off-putting/chemical smells that were less Pleasant.

4. Analysis and Results—Interviews

In addition to collecting field data, the team members also conducted a total of 54 interviews with WTS visitors and stakeholders, within the temple compound and at the plaza just outside the main entrance. The template for the semi-structured interviews is given in Supplementary Materials File S4. Interviewees were mostly individuals (25 females, 22 males), two people together (6), and, on one occasion, a group (see Figure 15). Typically, one individual provided most of the responses. In most cases, the interviewees were tourists (32), while in others, they were local visitors (9), workers (9), volunteers (3), or unknown (1). Age was between 20 and 80, with a median at 35 years. Nationality was mostly Hong Kong SAR (18) or Mainland PRC (14), followed by Other Asian (7), European (12), and unknown (3). Their ethnicity was Chinese (33), Caucasian (9), Other Asian (5), and unknown (7). For details, see Supplementary Materials File S5. Interviews were conducted in English (20), Mandarin Chinese (18), Cantonese (15), and French (1). Transcriptions were produced either manually by ear or using automated speech-to-text tools (Sonix.ai or Capcut.com), then translated into English with the assistance of Perplexity.ai and subsequently verified by the team’s multilingual members. All analyses were conducted on the English versions. See Supplementary Materials File S1 for a datasheet containing all information, including transcriptions in the original languages alongside their translations.

4.1. Thematic Analysis

The interview dataset was organised in 1511 rows with one statement per row. Statements mainly alternated between interviewer (728 rows) and interviewee (783 rows). Each interview contained on average 25 statements, in a range between 5 and 85. Text analysis was made on the interviewee statements (i.e., responses only) using both automatic (natural language processing) and qualitative–interpretative methods.

The median number of responses per interview was 12, in a range between 3 and 52. The median number of words per interview was 202, in a range between 31 and 758. First, we applied a Bag-of-Words (BoW) approach using koRpus [62]. In total, the dataset of interview responses contained 15015, and 2135 were different (1572 after lemmatisation). Amongst 756 unique nouns, the most common were people (130, 4.7%), incense (118, 4.2%), temple (102, 3.7%), time (79, 2.8%), yes (66, 2.4%), place (58, 2.1%), smell (50, 1.8%), and sound (46, 1.7%). There were 316 unique adjectives, and the most common were good (86, 6.8%), different (67, 5.3%), much (60, 4.7%), other (47, 3.7%), many (42, 3.3%), nice (33, 2.6%), first (30, 2.4%), okay (24, 1.9%), chinese (23, 1.8%). These frequency counts gave the initial direction for interpretation and defining emergent topics and CA codes.

4.1.1. Topic Modelling

To systematically identify the key themes discussed by interviewees, we conducted topic modelling of the 783 responses. The input text documents were preprocessed in R [61] to allow a comprehensive custom tokenisation (e.g., ’Wong Tai Sin’ → ’wong_tai_sin’), careful handling of negations (e.g., ‘cannot’ → ‘can not’, ‘haven’t’ → ‘have not’), and lemmatization using the koRpus library [62]. We then employed BERTopic v0.17.0 [52], an advanced topic modelling technique that combines transformer embeddings of text documents with clustering and dimensionality reduction to extract interpretable topics using a custom class-based variation of TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency).

We combined BERTopic clustering in Google Colab (https://colab.research.google.com, accessed on 9 June 2025) with libraries including UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) to perform non-linear dimensionality reduction [63]; HDBSCAN (Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) for grouping data points based on density to effectively identify clusters of different shapes and sizes [64]; SentenceTransformer, which builds on self-attention mechanisms to capture contextual relationships and long-range dependencies in texts, thus allowing the model to weigh different parts of the input text when creating embeddings [65]; CountVectorizer [66]; and others. Modelling proceeded in an iterative process where different components and parameters were heuristically fine-tuned until a satisfactory result was achieved. This was performed in parallel with close-reading of responses using classic interpretative content analysis. The final model is structured as follows:

Sentence transformer (‘all-MiniLM-L6-v2’) +

Vectorizer (stop_words = “english”, ngram_range = (1, 2), min_df = 3) +

PartOfSpeech (‘en_core_web_sm’, stopword removal) +

UMAP (n_neighbors = 10, n_components = 5, min_dist = 0.01, metric = ‘cosine’) +

HDBSCAN (min_cluster_size = 20, min_samples = 5, metric = ‘euclidean’, cluster_selection_method = ‘eom’) +

TF-IDF (seed_words = [‘sound’, ‘music’, ‘noise’, ‘smell’, ‘incense’, ‘smoke’, ‘time’, ‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘health’, ‘hong_kong’, ‘wong_tai_sin’], seed_multiplier = 2)

This model identified 12 topics that were meaningful across the interview dataset. For instance, Topic 0 relates to smellscape with keywords such as ‘smell’, ‘burn’, ‘incense’, ‘health’, ‘stick’, and ‘smoke’. Topic 1 centres on soundscape with the top keywords ‘sound’, ‘music’, ‘noise’, ‘place’, and ‘feel’. More topics are illustrated in Figure 16. This distilled the complex interview data into coherent themes, providing valuable insights into interviewee perspectives. These findings informed our strategy in the interpretative content analysis.

4.1.2. Content Analysis

In the first step of CA, the 783 responses were close-read by each of the team members, interpreted, and classified according to the four question-areas in the interview template, and a rest category: Interviewee (22.4%), General Experiences (28.3%), Soundscape (18.0%), Smellscape (21.7%), and Other Topics (5.4%). A small number of statements were about both sound and smell (1.0%). The General Experiences category covered statements related to religion, emotion, as well as sensory experiences other than sound and smell, while the Other Topics category covered statements about money, working conditions, accessibility, and so forth. As noted above, some of the statements were quite long and broached several topics. In particular, the General Experiences category was multifaceted, and in this way, we distilled 14 emergent topics. The two main themes of interest, Soundscape and Smellscape, were kept intact. Then, the researchers, first individually and then as a group, discussed the statements carefully, and allocated them into twelve emergent topics (or subcategories): Activity, Architecture, Culture, Emotion, Geography, Health, Memory, Multisensory, People, Religion, Time, Value. The basic statistics and examples of the main and emergent topics are given in

Table 2. The interpreted topics with counts of Statements, Words, Proportions, Nouns, and Adjectives, with examples and count in parenthesis. Note that because some of the long statements were multifaceted and therefore split into two or more topics, the total number (855) is 10% larger than the number of interview responses (783).

Topic	Statements	Words	Proportion	Nouns	Examples (Nouns)	Adjectives	Examples (Adjectives)
Soundscape	125	2833	13.50%	598	sound (58), music (44), people (28), temple (20), atmosphere (13), place (13), bell (12), chant (12), noise (9), lot (8), play (8), traffic (8), area (7), bird (7), bite (7), day (7), yes (7), car (5), crowd (5), drum (5), instrument (5), part (5), thing (5), time (5), tourist (5), use (5), voice (5)	279	noisy (12), sound (12), much (11), many (9), nice (9), quiet (9), electronic (8), other (7), traditional (7), different (6), okay (6), chinese (5), good (5), loud (5), peaceful (5)
Smellscape	137	3472	16.50%	701	incense (107), smell (72), people (26), temple (22), smoke (17), burn (15), kind (13), scent (13), yes (12), lot (11), stick (10), air (8), bite (8), pollution (8), city (7), nothing (7), place (7), feel (6), sense (6), time (6), environment (5), issue (5), part (5), something (5), use (5)	312	good (19), strong (15), much (14), different (12), pleasant (12), other (9), smokeless (9), special (9), little (8), many (7), environmental (6), okay (6), unpleasant (6), traditional (5)
Emotion	103	1820	8.70%	328	people (20), smell (19), incense (15), temple (13), music (12), peace (12), sound (12), experience (10), place (10), bite (8), feel (7), anything (6), sense (6), yes (6), crowd (5), lot (5)	180	peaceful (13), nice (10), much (8), pleasant (8), different (7), good (6), sound (6), unpleasant (5)
Religion	102	2884	13.70%	611	temple (43), people (32), incense (27), religion (12), something (12), wong_tai_sin (11), yes (11), culture (10), god (10), kind (10), thing (10), lot (9), buddhist (8), church (8), place (8), smell (8), atmosphere (7), buddha (7), buddhism (7), experience (7), time (7), support (6), worship (6), … (5), burn (5), city (5), faith (5)	224	good (15), much (13), spiritual (12), different (11), other (8), religious (8), many (7)
Activity	60	1491	7.10%	309	time (17), dollar (12), people (12), stick (12), incense (11), temple (9), place (6), bundle (5), kind (5), something (5), wish (5), yes (5)	73	other (6)
Value	57	1556	7.40%	307	people (24), incense (18), temple (14), place (8), thing (8), time (8), wong_tai_sin (7), money (6), everyone (5), lot (5)	151	good (21), many (7), much (6), other (6), smokeless (6)
People	48	975	4.60%	187	people (40), lot (11), temple (10), place (8), crowd (6), sound (6)	100	many (13), good (12), much (6)
Time	44	924	4.40%	184	time (15), temple (11), incense (8), year (8), atmosphere (6), people (6), yes (6), day (5), place (5), wong_tai_sin (5)	83	first (9), different (8)
Geography	41	1215	5.80%	213	temple (19), people (11), china (6), time (6), church (5)	94	different (9), mainland (6), other (5), similar (5)
Architecture	38	844	4.00%	156	temple (13), place (7), incense (5), people (5)	88	different (6), beautiful (5), nice (5), same (5)
Memory	33	1328	6.30%	263	incense (14), people (11), place (9), wong_tai_sin (8), temple (7), past (6), lot (5), smell (5), sound (5)	104	much (10), different (8), good (8), other (5)
Multisensory	28	712	3.40%	129	temple (7), atmosphere (6), colour (6), experience (5)	65	beautiful (8), different (6), nice (6), colourful (5), same (5)
Health	21	521	2.50%	128	incense (8), health (7), medicine (7)	64	good (7), chinese (6)
Culture	18	416	2.00%	82	culture (7)	45	chinese (6)
Totals	855	20,991	100.00%	4196	–	1862	–

.

At several junctions in the iterative process of thematic analysis, we conducted a correlation analysis whereby the emergent topics from interpretative analysis were compared with the topics from the BERTopic model. To estimate the correlation, we considered the patterns of matches and non-matches using Spearman’s non-parametric correlation statistic. We found this to be a helpful heuristic to fine-tune and converge the two analyses. See

Table 3. Spearman correlations between 12 topics from BERTopic (rows) and 14 emergent topics from CA. Note that BERTopic ‘−1’ is a rest category. Correlation statistics in bold are significant (|$\rho$| > 0.12).

Topic	Count	Representation	Smell- scape	Sound- scape	Inter- viewee	Multi- sensory	Geo- graphy	Cul- ture	Reli- gion	Other	Health	People	Time	Emo- tion	Archi- tecture	Experi- ence	Acti- vity	Memo- ry	Value
−1	108	[‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘time’, ‘fortune’, ‘bite’, ‘beautiful’, ‘noise’, ‘yesterday’, ‘incense’, ‘place’]	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0
0	111	[‘smell’, ‘incense’, ‘smoke’, ‘health’, ‘religion’, ‘burn’, ‘stick’, ‘strong’, ‘little’, ‘kind’]	0.66	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.18	0.0	−0.1	0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.1	0.1
1	99	[‘sound’, ‘noise’, ‘hear’, ‘quiet’, ‘chant’, ‘crowd’, ‘area’, ‘calm’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘traditional’]	−0.1	0.70	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.17	0.1	0.14	0.0	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0
2	74	[‘time’, ‘dollar’, ‘guide’, ‘day’, ‘year’, ‘minute’, ‘early’, ‘work’, ‘expensive’, ‘come’]	−0.1	−0.1	0.28	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	0.24	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	0.18	−0.1	−0.1	0.0
3	59	[‘colourful’, ‘small’, ‘colour’, ‘time’, ‘different’, ‘touch’, ‘matter’, ‘love’, ‘special’, ‘big’]	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
4	51	[‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘chinese’, ‘wong_tai_sin’, ‘buddhism’, ‘medicine’, ‘smoke’, ‘chinese medicine’, ‘temple’, ‘different’]	−0.1	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.28	0.21	0.20	0.20	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
5	49	[‘know’, ‘problem’, ‘fine’, ‘approach’, ‘acceptable’, ‘great’, ‘overall’, ‘good’, ‘strong’, ‘want’]	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	0.0
6	48	[‘sure’, ‘idea’, ‘positive’, ‘sound’, ‘nice’]	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0
7	44	[‘garden’, ‘temple’, ‘commercialize’, ‘central’, ‘love’, ‘time’, ‘visit’, ‘food’, ‘pay’, ‘beautiful’]	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0
8	39	[‘health’, ‘peace’, ‘spiritual’, ‘pray’, ‘ask’, ‘mind’, ‘good thing’, ‘help’, ‘money’, ‘good’]	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.27	0.24	0.1	0.1	−0.1	0.17	0.0	0.1	0.0	−0.1	0.0
9	37	[‘hong_kong’, ‘time’, ‘arrive’, ‘stop’, ‘bad’, ‘rest’, ‘travel’, ‘expensive’, ‘old’, ‘hand’]	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.1	0.1	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.12
10	35	[‘wong_tai_sin’, ‘time’, ‘health’, ‘incense’, ‘culture’, ‘friend’, ‘pray’, ‘famous’, ‘offering’, ‘year’]	0.0	−0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.17	0.1	0.1	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.1	0.0	0.1	0.0
11	29	[‘clean’, ‘tourist’, ‘time’, ‘city’, ‘group’, ‘tour’, ‘spot’, ‘right’, ‘great’, ‘country’]	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.1	0.0	−0.1	−0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0	−0.1	0.0	0.1	0.0	0.0	0.0

.

4.2. Sentiment Analysis

Finally we explored sentiment analysis of the 783 interview responses, both computationally and interpretively, through ratings.

4.2.1. Computational Sentiment Analysis

We used VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner), a lexicon and rule-based sentiment analysis tool [67] to calculate sentiment scores (range −1 … 1) for each of the topics determined by the BERTopic modelling. Boxplots and mean values are presented in Figure 17. As indicated in Table 3, Topic −1 functions as a residual or ‘rest’ category, whereas Topic 0 most likely represents the emergent theme of Smellscape, Topic 1 corresponds to Soundscape, and several of the subsequent topics follow accordingly.

The highest mean sentiment, indicating the most positive response, was observed for Topic 8, which is likely associated with the emergent theme of Religion. An example of a response classified under this topic is as follows:

“Yes, many come with happy or positive intentions. They ask for safety or success in their endeavors. And sometimes, people come just to give thanks. It’s usually a peaceful and uplifting experience.”

(Mainland Chinese guide, speaking Mandarin, male 35 years old, YR.5.31)

Topic 4 also had high average positivity. It most likely corresponded to the emergent topic Geography, which was interpreted as interviewees making a comparison between, for example, countries or regions. Here is a representative response:

“Yeah. Maybe I think because I have been also in China. In China, I didn’t feel so much about religion or things like Chinese people are not. So in going in, not that they don’t believe or anything. I don’t know about that. I didn’t discuss it very profoundly with them, but they are not going so much in temples that I saw as example in Sri Lanka or here. But in Hong Kong, I feel like there is a lot and a lot of people coming into the temple or even Like honoring their gods.”

(French tourist, speaking English, female 30 years old, PM.8.48)

Classified as Topic 0, Smellscape, one interviewee said:

“Yes, I think the scent brings back a lot of memories. For me, the smell of incense doesn’t specifically remind me of my grandmother because we didn’t have this kind of scent at home. But I do think that the act of burning incense is deeply connected to religious faith—it’s very ingrained. You rarely hear of people burning incense who are Christians. Usually, those who do it believe in Guanyin, Buddha, or other deities from Buddhism or Taoism. So this act makes me think of certain religious concepts. This connection is related to my own memories and even shapes my perception of the practice. Of course, different religions have their own rituals—for example, Christians have Mass, while Buddhists and Taoists have their respective customs. To me, every religious ritual or symbol carries a specific meaning. As for the scent, the smell of incense evokes religious thoughts for me. It might remind me of the setting for worship or even create a kind of spiritual feeling.”

(Chinese tourist, male 30 years old, Yui.4.10)

Finally, music is a significant component of the soundscape at WTS. To illustrate a response classified as Topic 1 (Soundscape; see Table 3), we highlight the following response. Note that when the interviewee speaks of ‘golden sounds’ (金曲, pinyin: jīn qǔ), he refers to classic, treasured songs of exceptional cultural value, though he is rather dismissive of the background music at the temple.

“The music they play? They play some music here. It’s a bit of music, yes. Some people find it very calming. It’s not like they’re playing something like golden sounds or anything. In some places, they focus on playing golden sounds.”

(Local volunteer, speaking Mandarin, male 55 years old, YR.9.60)

4.2.2. Interpretative Sentiment Analysis

In this process, the aim was to gain a more granular understanding of the main topics, Soundscape and Smellscape, that were identified in the interview responses. The content analysis (see above) had identified 87 responses focused on Soundscape and 72 on Smellscape. The researchers individually close-read and interpreted each, estimating the degree of Response Pleasantness and Response Strength, identifying words indicating sources, and classifying these sources.

For Soundscape, estimation of Response Pleasantness followed the standard [40] (see also Section 2.3 above), and Response Strength was rated on a Likert scale (0 = Do not hear at all, 1 = Only a little, 2 = Moderately, 3 = A lot). Likewise for Sound types, the classification followed the standard, with the addition of a ‘Music’ category.

For Smellscape, Response Pleasantness was estimated on a Likert scale (−2 … +2, labelled Very unpleasant … Very pleasant), and Strength was rated on a 4-step Likert scale (0 = Not present, 1 = Little, 2 = Some, 3 = A lot). For Response Smelltypes, the classification was made in six categories: Bio (everything that emanates directly from nature), Food, Human (i.e., people’s body odour), Incense, Other, and Undefined.

In Figure 18, there are four panels of boxplots for Response Pleasantness and Response Strength versus Soundtypes and Smelltypes. We conducted a series of post hoc non-parametric comparisons to find where ratings differed amongst the source types. With family-wise error alpha set at 0.05, the Bonferroni-corrected significance level for each comparison was 0.00042.

For Soundscape, we analysed Response Pleasantness across Soundtypes (leaving Fan out). A Kruskal-Wallis test found that there were no differences amongst Human, Music, Nature, Other, and Undefined (Kruskal–Wallis ${\chi }^2$(4) = 3.9, p = 0.41 n.s.). Traffic was significantly lower than these, i.e., less pleasant, as indicated by a Wilcoxon rank sum test (W = 6035, p ≈ 0 ***).

The difference between means was 0.56 units on the 5-step Likert scale. For Response Strength across Soundtypes (again, leaving Fan out), there were significant differences (Kruskal–Wallis ${\chi }^2$(5) = 26, p = 0.00001 ***). Traffic was perceived as slightly stronger (p = 0.013) though the difference was not significant after Bonferroni correction.

For Smellscape, we analysed Response Pleasantness across Smelltypes. Here, the overall test was not significant (Kruskal-Wallis ${\chi }^2$(4) = 12, p = 0.032) after Bonferroni correction. For Response Strength across Smelltypes, the overall test was significant (Kruskal–Wallis ${\chi }^2$(5) = 54, p ≈ 0 ***), and a Wilcoxon test revealed that the smell of Incense, as expressed in interviews, was significantly stronger than smells from other sources (W = 37172, p ≈ 0 ***). Mean strength of Incense was 0.46 scale units higher than the others. The differences within the latter group, i.e., Bio, Food, Human, Other, and Undefined, were non-significant after Bonferroni correction (Kruskal–Wallis ${\chi }^2$(4) = 16, p = 0.0024).

4.3. Association Between Topics

Finally, we estimated the association between each of the two main topics, Soundscape and Smellscape, and the 12 topics emerging from the interpretative content analysis. Two values were produced to express the association, namely mean pleasantness and word count. To recall, Pleasantness was estimated in the interpretative sentiment analysis described above. Word count was the total number of lemmatized words shared between the main and the emergent topic. The values are given in

Table 4. Associations between Soundscape, Smellscape, and twelve emergent topics. In each cell, the left value (outside parenthesis) represents the mean pleasantness across all statements that associate the main and the emergent topic (range: −2 … +2); the right value (inside parenthesis) represents the total number of words that the associated topics share.

Emergent Topic	Soundscape	Smellscape
Activity	0.19 (173)	0.29 (233)
Architecture	−0.25 (300)	0.05 (419)
Culture	0.46 (171)	0.56 (134)
Emotion	0.51 (650)	0.78 (847)
Geography	0.50 (279)	0.61 (319)
Health	−0.62 (82)	−0.08 (580)
Memory	−0.32 (316)	0.56 (990)
Multisensory	0.50 (110)	0.56 (163)
People	0.31 (623)	−0.21 (252)
Religion	0.40 (278)	0.41 (984)
Time	−0.17 (344)	0.12 (123)
Value	0.00 (121)	0.32 (561)

. See also Figure 19 for boxplots of the distributions of pleasantness, and Supplementary Materials File S6 for details.

4.4. Summary of Interview Analysis

An integrating illustration of topics and sentiment in the interviews is given in Figure 20. It is a conceptual layout showing the relationship between the two main topics and twelve emergent topics. Comparing it with Figure 1, we can see how the findings of the present study reveal the primary importance of Soundscape, Smellscape, and Religion, and secondary importance of Emotion, Memory, and People, as well as nine other emergent topics, in the context of sensory heritage.

Overall, the strongest associations between Soundscape and Smellscape were with interview responses focusing on Emotion (overall mean = 0.63), Geography (0.56), Multisensory (0.53), Culture (0.50), and Religion (0.41). These relationships show the importance of multisensory dimensions of the experience beyond the visual, i.e., soundscape and smellscape, as vital parts of sensory heritage, when considering people’s appreciation of Wong Tai Sin temple in Hong Kong.

5. Discussion

In this study, we attempted to build an empirically based understanding of how the complementary duality of the physical and ephemeral expresses itself when people speak about their experiences and observations. When asked about Soundscape and Smellscape, their responses had the strongest connection to Emotion (as a topic emerging from the thematic analysis), but also to Geography, which represents statements about architecture, such as the shape, size, and colour of buildings, and their place in the cityscape. Thus, sounds and smell are connected, in people’s mind, to both the ephemeral and the physical aspects of the physical environment. As we have seen, Wong Tai Sin (WTS) is representative of Chinese temples in Hong Kong, yet has a unique role to play in the physical cityscape fabric as well as the ephemeral cultural landscape as a place and guarantor, preserving deep traditions for residents and believers, as well as promoting tourism by giving visitors opportunities for authentic experiences. As one of the oldest Chinese temples in Hong Kong, it is a cornerstone for creating the city’s identity.

The soundscape is busy and distinctly urban, characterised by elevated sound pressure levels stemming from visitors’ voices, piped background music, and surrounding traffic noise. Natural sounds, such as birdsong, can be heard in certain areas of the site, including the small park within the compound and a line of trees on the plaza outside the main gate (see Figure 7). The smellscape is predominantly defined by the smoky incense produced by the religious practice of burning joss sticks during prayers. Visitors often express a strong emotional attachment to this ‘smellmark’ [24,25], whilst also raising concerns about potential health impacts. In response, Sik Sik Yuen has modernised its approach by installing a water mist smoke suppression system at the main altar and promoting the use of incense sticks that are said to produce less smoke.

The interview material is a rich trove of information about the cultural understandings relative to the site of the case study and beyond. Together with acoustic measurements, along with soundscape and smellscape ratings, the interpretations now allow a discussion of some aspects of sustainable development of cities related to sensory heritage, namely nature experiences, music, crowdedness, religious practices, cultural identity, tourism, and policy. But first, a word about the key concepts and how they appear in some of the different languages in the interviews.

5.1. Translating Key Terms

The interviews provide an invaluable perspective onto how Wong Tai Sin is perceived. However, one must be careful when interpreting the key concepts—sensory heritage, soundscape, and smellscape—which are generally not familiar to lay people. The first two are established in Cantonese: sensory heritage is 感官遺產 (gam2 gun1 wai4 caan2), and ‘soundscape’ is 聲景 (sing1 ging2). The third, ‘smellscape’, could be translated as 嗅景 (cau3 ging2). All three terms are somewhat technical and were never used by our interviewees. Instead, what we find is that people employ other words and expressions, such as 氣氛 (hei3 fan1) which translates as ‘ambience’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘feeling’, or ‘mood’, and they must be interpreted contextually. To illustrate, we give two examples from the same interview, moments apart in the recording. In the first, 氣氛 refers to smellscape, and in the second, to soundscape:

“For me, the [氣氛] here is very positive, especially the feeling that burning incense brings—it’s uplifting. Of course, as mentioned earlier, environmental concerns might be an issue, and I acknowledge that. However, I believe a city needs a mix of cultures. It can’t just be skyscrapers; it also needs cultural depth. As long as these practices are manageable, I think they are acceptable.”

(Mainland Chinese tourist, speaking Mandarin, male 40 years old, Yui.3.4)

followed a few moments later by

“Well, Wong Tai Sin Temple isn’t entirely within a residential area; there’s some distance. From where I am, I can’t really hear the temple sounds. As for the electronic music you mentioned, I think it helps create [氣氛], which is very important. In the past, there might have been live chanting or drumbeats, which added a traditional feel to the temple. Even with the switch to electronic music, as long as it maintains that ambiance, it can still convey the temple’s cultural and spiritual essence.”

(same as above, Yui.3.8)

The linguistic situation, involving multiple interviews conducted in different languages, underscores the importance of contextualising each response and carefully adapting translations prior to performing thematic content analysis, whether interpretative or computational. This presents a promising direction for future research.

5.2. Sounds of Nature and Music

Some very positive aspects of the soundscape emerged. For example, one interviewee spoke enthusiastically about the natural sounds on the site:

“For Wong Tai Sin, the sound I remember most distinctly is the sound of birds. Since I live nearby, there are bird nests in the area. Although there are fewer trees now, I used to hear birds chirping all the time, especially around the trees. The birds’ calls are a signature sound of this place for me. Apart from that, the bustling noise when I walk here also makes me feel the vibrancy [活力] of this area, which is part of Wong Tai Sin’s unique atmosphere [氛圍]. Birds’ calls are quite sharp, but for me, they represent nature and comfort—they’re a natural sound. Human voices or other artificial sounds give off a different feeling—they might feel noisy or stressful. For me, there’s a clear distinction between natural and artificial sounds, and this distinction shapes how I feel about them.”

(Local tourist, speaking Cantonese, male 30 years old, Yui.4.12)

This witness contrasted the ‘vibrancy’ of bird sounds with the ‘stressful’ human voices and ‘artificial sounds’, a non-obvious observation at a site where noise levels are elevated. It evidences a capacity to apply semantic listening [68]: a discerning, cognitive attitude. We saw in Figure 8 and Figure 9 that sound pressure levels are highest near the densely trafficked highway and large road flanking the temple compound on two sides, and also in the central areas of the compound. As Figure 12 reveals, the two Sound types, Traffic, Humans, and Other, are heard in these areas, and likely contribute to elevated levels. Human sounds are mostly the chatty voices of large crowds of people, while Other refers to background music piped out from numerous loudspeakers. In the minds of some visitors, they can fuse into the soundscape, as the following response suggests:

“I think human voices and music can mix naturally. That’s why this place feels special—because like you said, the musical instruments and people’s voices mix here. It creates a “third sound”. The first sound is the instrument. The second is people’s voices. When combined, they create something new. It becomes a unique sound, something entirely different.”

(Korean tourist, speaking English, male 27 years old, YR.6.20)

In the one hundred years since its first appearance, WTS has transformed from a local temple catering to the spiritual needs of residents to a major tourist attraction of Hong Kong. One of the interviewed tourists found the first-time experience of the temple novel and refreshing, particularly the music:

“I actually like the music too. I don’t really like the loud noise, but the music is very nice. The music is also very unique and beautiful. It’s very Chinese. It’s actually hard to describe. It’s my first time experiencing this. It’s all very new and amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. But everything is so beautiful and new to me.”

(Mainland Chinese tourist, speaking Mandarin, female 25 years old, YR.1.19)

5.3. Soundscape and Emotion

As we saw in Table 4, the highest pleasantness involving Soundscape was found in the associations with Emotion (mean = 0.51), Geography (0.50), Multisensory (0.50) and Culture (0.46). The largest numbers of words in common with Soundscape were for Emotion and People. An example of strong association between Soundscape and Emotion is found in the following statement:

“Oh, the people are so kind here. There are also a lot of tourists. So yeah, everyone’s really nice. I actually like the music too. I don’t really like the loud noise, but the music is very nice. The music is also very unique and beautiful. It’s very Chinese. It’s actually hard to describe. It’s my first time experiencing this. It’s all very new and amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. But everything is so beautiful and new to me.”

(Ukrainian tourist, speaking English, female 25 years old, YR.2.19)

Notably, there was a strongly negative pleasantness in the association between Soundscape and Health, though the number of words was small. For example:

“I’m used to it, used to it. In Hong Kong, everything is like this, full of food stalls. There are so many, I’m used to it. Compared to the mainland, there are some places … In rural areas, it’s quieter, with fewer cars. But here, it’s all about food and noise. It’s much louder here. Everything here is about food. It’s nothing, really. I hope for good health.”

(Local incense seller, speaking Mandarin, female 55 years old, YR.3.42)

Meanwhile, even higher pleasantness mean values were found for Smellscape in its associations with Emotion (0.78) and Geography (0.61), followed by Culture, Memory, Multisensory (0.56), and Religion (0.41). Memory, Religion, and Emotion had the largest numbers of words in common with Smellscape. One of the longest statements in all ot the interviews involves smell, memory, and religion, and reads as follows:

“Yes, I think the scent brings back a lot of memories. For me, the smell of incense doesn’t specifically remind me of my grandmother because we didn’t have this kind of scent at home. But I do think that the act of burning incense is deeply connected to religious faith—it’s very ingrained. You rarely hear of people burning incense who are Christians. Usually, those who do it believe in Guanyin, Buddha, or other deities from Buddhism or Taoism. So this act makes me think of certain religious concepts. This connection is related to my own memories and even shapes my perception of the practice. Of course, different religions have their own rituals—for example, Christians have Mass, while Buddhists and Taoists have their respective customs. To me, every religious ritual or symbol carries a specific meaning. As for the scent, the smell of incense evokes religious thoughts for me. It might remind me of the setting for worship or even create a kind of spiritual feeling.”

(Chinese tourist, speaking Cantonese, male 30 years old, Yui.4.10)

5.4. People

The sensory heritage is strongly connected to the experience of crowds and of other people. While locals might inherit practices from their parents, new visitors might adapt to the social, shared character of the site. Furthermore, the experience of religious practices, arts, and crafts are vital parts of sensory heritage in this context, as is the psychological recognition of common practice across time, forming memories that may be individual or shared in a community. A definition of sensory heritage should include both social and individual components, such as activities and memories. One interview response that touches upon this is

“Yes, these [cultural heritage activities, like bell ringing and incense burning. They’re part of traditional culture] are good things. To preserve them, people need to keep participating. Doing good deeds, la! Worshiping has its own meaning, like the saying, ‘The more you worship, the more good things will happen.’ It’s true. Seeing elderly people—like those 90-year-old grannies—coming daily with their spouses to worship is so moving. Their spirits are so high!”

(Local Cantonese Street hawker, female 47 years old, Yui.1.26)

Our interactions with people at WTS naturally yielded to the spatial qualities of the site. However, the interviewees did not spontaneously speak of the environment in terms of physical architecture, but rather, they conveyed it as an abstract entity, frequently with geographical comparisons and multisensory metaphors, and mediated by emotions and memories. No doubt that this mindset was cued by us interviewing them about soundscape and smellscape. WTS is a place, a “centre of felt value … [that] incarnates the experiences and aspirations of a people. Place is not only a fact to be explained in the broader frame of space, but it is also a reality to be clarified and understood from the perspectives of the people who have given it meaning” [69]. A sense of control or choice might also facilitate the attribution of meaning to a places [3]. To develop a good understanding of a complex site under study, we need an explicit recognition of the multisensory environment through first-hand measurements and observations, together with an implicit understanding filtered through interviews and interpretation, mixing sound, smell, culture, and religion that compose of a built place.

5.5. The Smell of Religion

On cultural and religious practices, Figure 19 has highlighted the close connection that religion has with soundscape and smellscape. As noted in the Smellscape analysis, especially Figure 14, the strongest and most defining smell for a Chinese temple emanates from the burning of incense. It is a central part of the religious practices at WTS, and the incense sticks themselves carry significant cultural value. For example, the expression ‘first incense’ [頭炷香 tau4 zyu6 hoeng1] carries a strong cultural reference in Hong Kong. It refers to the first incense lit in the Lunar New Year, a wish for good luck. One interviewee said:

“I feel that Wong Tai Sin (Temple) has the most incense smoke on the first day of the Lunar New Year [頭炷香], when (people) come to offer the first incense. Personally, I’ve been to Wong Tai Sin (Temple) less than five times. My understanding of Wong Tai Sin (Temple) is that my parents’ generation would come here to draw divination sticks and pray for good fortune in the coming year.”

(Mainland Chinese tourist, speaking Cantonese, male 65 years old, RL.1.13)

On tourism and business, many points were made by the local workers who earn their living from selling joss sticks by the MTR station and WTS entrance. When asked about the ‘good deeds’ that WTS creates, one of them said:

“I agree. They do a lot of good things. Although selling incense may involve money, there are also free services. For example, they offer free Chinese medicine to the elderly. I’ve heard about these from others, and they are good things. But if you’re a tourist, coming here for the experience, it’s nice. Since Hong Kong is a tourist destination, Wong Tai Sin isn’t bad. But if tourism is the main focus, perhaps there should be more emphasis on traditional culture, like sharing Wong Tai Sin’s history and culture.”

(Local Housing Authority security staff, speaking Cantonese, female 40 years old, Yui.5.20)

Sound and smell are constituent parts of the environment and are perceived as an overall experience in Wong Tai Sin temple. Difficult to bypass, these perceptions are greater in scope and interpreted in parallel with the cultural and religious aspects of temple practice in Hong Kong. Furthermore, the expressive quotes that contain both positively and negatively charged terms are less obvious when pinpointing the sentiments of the temple. The relieving character of the experience serves as an integral part of the city, not only as a tourist attraction but also as a public good. It transcends meanings, where visitors’ experiences are reflected upon the temple, this “oasis of sacrality [where] you can find peace and meditation away from the traffic noise and crowds of the millions of people that populate Hong Kong” [70]. These expressions are correlated with the religious function of Wong Tai Sin. As expressed by one of the locals:

“I go there when I need peace, or when things aren’t going well. It’s a place for spiritual renewal.”

(Chinese Mainland guide, speaking Mandarin, male 35 years old, YR.5.35)

This reflects a certain philosophical quality mediated by WTS. On the other hand, other voices suggest that the temple might be failing its intended role as a religious site:

“It’s like the commercialization of everything—people chose to make it a business. Some places seem to have turned into business hubs, losing their pure religious atmosphere.”

(Local Housing Authority security staff, speaking Cantonese, female 40 years old, Yui.5.16)

This leads us to consider culture and religion as vital components of identity.

5.6. Identity

Being a place of significant socio-cultural value to Hong Kong, WTS Temple as a symbolic site is discussed in relation to culture and religion of Hong Kong. This view is widely perceived and practised by locals of Hong Kong. For example, the quality of Hong Kong as a metropolitan city that represents a multicultural identity is stated as follows:

“Hong Kong is a place where people from everywhere gather. All kinds of people.”

(Ukrainian tourist, speaking English, female 25 years old, YR.2.6)

During site visits, we notice a full sense of lived experiences in WTS Temple. Despite being a sacred place, the different responses we received show a cultural character that is intimately merged with ideas and structures of the social order of Hong Kong. The strong religious colours of WTS Temple casted by smell and sounds is inscribed with nuances that reflect Hong Kong’s secular identity. For example:

“I don’t strictly follow any one faith. But I respect various beliefs, like Buddhism and Taoism. For example, I’m not specifically devoted to Wong Tai Sin, but I respect his teachings. Wong Tai Sin is a Taoist deity, but the temple also incorporates aspects of Buddhism.”

(Local incense seller, speaking Mandarin, female 55 years old, YR.3.14)

At the same time, when considering the context of tourism and branding, it is clear that cultural identity expressed as sensory heritage represents a significant economic value. Stronger digitalisation and use of “smart elements” such as VR are part of the Hong Kong Government’s blueprint for ‘Tourism 2.0’ [71]. Furthermore, the market for ‘virtual tourism’, where people experience remote locations in VR without leaving home, is rapidly expanding. The worldwide market is currently worth 9 billion USD and is projected to reach 31 billion USD by 2030 [72]. The drivers of this growth include strong technological advancements such as 5G Internet access, consumer behaviour shifting towards sustainable tourism that involves fewer flights, and the opportunity for more inclusive access to places perceived as exciting or exotic.

5.7. Future Prospects

Looking forward, we might extrapolate the learnings from Wong Tai Sin towards other sites in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Case studies of comparable sites using the tools and methods we have developed here might strengthen the present findings or oppose them, and case studies of sites of very different character might oblige us to adapt the tools. One avenue of future development that we believe the findings in the present study will enable lies in the development of a sensory heritage policy that leverages knowledge from urban soundscape and smellscape research. Hong Kong, like many other jurisdictions, has detailed regulations to control some of the negative aspects of sounds and smells, such as noise from construction sites and malodour from sewage plants. However, in a multifaceted future-oriented city, there are also soundscapes and smellscapes that people find valuable, likeable, and culturally relevant. These sounds and smells are part of the sensory heritage, and they add value to the city’s identity. Awareness of Hong Kong’s rich sensory heritage is important to people’s connection to their own complex history. A multisensory approach to promoting Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage abroad was recently seen [73], but the mechanisms through which sensory heritage is created, maintained, and integrated in various sectors of the economy are still not well known. Further research is needed in order to reframe the soundscape and smellscape as sensory heritage: as the sum total of positive sounds and smells. This research should be based on international standards for soundscape and smellscape together with relevant regulatory frameworks in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the European Union. To develop an action plan for policy recommendations of the sensory heritage, we must also bring in the digitalisation of soundscape and smellscape, and extend the technological affordances in VR through sounds and smells represented remotely in conjunction with traditional visual elements.

5.8. Limitations of the Study

The last point underscores that the present study has important limitations. We acknowledge that excluding video recordings from the analysis leaves many significant aspects unexplored. Even when focusing on hearing and smelling, visual perception undoubtedly plays a role in how people appreciate a complex multimodal environment. This limitation should be kept in mind when interpreting the results. The rich audiovisual material we captured at Wong Tai Sin could be analysed for soundscape classification and recognition, potentially forming the basis for future research.

Another limitation relates to the ‘snapshot’ nature of the study. The team visited the site several times during the winter months, outside of religious festivals. The weather was mild and dry on the days we collected field data. Given Hong Kong’s considerable seasonal variation—for example, hot and rainy summers—changing conditions are likely to have a strong influence on both soundscape and smellscape. Additionally, religious festivals bring increased activity and a larger number of visitors, which could also affect the sensory environment. To develop a complete picture, data collection should be repeated multiple times over an extended period. We hope this study provides initial indications of which tools and methods might be most effective for a larger, potentially more resource-intensive investigation.

Finally, we must recognise that the field data we collected were limited to the outdoor areas of Wong Tai Sin, whereas much of the religious activity takes place inside the temple buildings. Initially, Sik Sik Yuen granted permission to record audio and video solely outdoors, which shaped the study design. It was only towards the very end, after building trust with representatives of the management, that we were permitted to record inside the Taisui Yuanchen Hall (元辰殿, jyun4 san4 din6), an underground chamber within the temple complex. Regrettably, this material has been reserved for future research.

6. Conclusions

The aim of this study has been to contribute knowledge to sensory heritage research in general and to Hong Kong’s cultural landscape in particular. Through measurements, observations, ratings, and interviews with diverse stakeholders, this paper identifies and summarises a range of varied perspectives on the sensory experience at Wong Tai Sin Temple. Analysis of interview responses has highlighted its defining characteristics, in comparison with similar sites in Hong Kong and abroad. People often express their experiences in emotional terms and spontaneously recall memories, often from childhood, that cast present-day experiences into sharper relief. While specific sounds (such as the background music piped throughout the site) and smells (dominated by incense burning) are valued by some, others express concerns about noise and air pollution. These conflicting perspectives illustrate that the field of sensory heritage remains at an early stage. More data needs to be collected from different stakeholder perspectives to identify the right questions, to refine the theoretical framework, and create a unifying, productive definition. This, we believe, will stimulate policy development that goes beyond regulating the negative impacts of nuisances and strives to actively preserve and promote sensory heritage in sustainable and inclusive ways. The implications are clear for urban designers, travel agencies, and companies and government bodies involved in branding and virtual tourism. Our study elucidates the links between soundscape, smellscape, and culture, providing evidence of the importance of sensory heritage for sustainable cities.