Research On The Difference Between Perceived Emotion And Felt Emotion In Urban Soundscape

Nowadays,multiple urban scenes can also be regarded as products and services,whose core is three aspects of interaction with users: cognition-based perception,experience-based feeling and use behavior.Acoustic environment is one of the main components of urban environment.The interaction between the acoustic environment and people,the soundscape,can not only be perceived,but also be felt.There are extensive studies on perceived and felt emotions in the field of music.Sociology and psychology will play an important role in the study of soundscape perceived and felt emotions.The main objective of this study is to investigate differences of the emotions generated by different mechanisms from the two aspects of sound source identification and soundscape evaluation in urban indoor and outdoor public spaces through laboratory experiments and field measurements.In order to explore all factors of soundscape felt and perceived emotions,and make a comprehensive comparison,the soundscape study of urban outdoor public spaces was carried out through a laboratory audio–visual experiment.48 voluntary participants were required to assess both ‘perceived emotion' and ‘felt emotion' of the soundscape by questionnaire.Semantic differential analysis of the results shows that although the soundscape in urban open spaces is rather complicated,it is still possible to identify five major factors of felt emotion and seven major factors of perceived emotion.The indoor research selected two dimensions of "valence" and "arousal" to explore the influencing factors of the relationship between felt and perceived emotions and their impact on the evaluation results.Field test was conducted in the indoor public activity spaces of facilities for the elderly.At the same time,139 elderly people were interviewed through questionnaires.To study the differences between felt and perceived emotions in sound source identification,a laboratory experiment was performed.It was found that hearing foreground technological sound or background natural sound were more significantly correlated with felt emotion,while hearing other foreground and background sound source categories(musical sounds,natural sounds,human sounds and technological sounds)were more significantly correlated with perceived emotion.In addition,perceived emotional factors can well explain subjective dominant sound sources.To further investigate whether felt and perceived emotions are affected differently in sound source identification,field research was conducted.In the field,perceived and felt emotions were only negatively correlated with hearing human sounds.However,the relationship between the two emotions was more affected by hearing the sounds of music radio or natural sounds.To study the differences between felt and perceived emotions in soundscape evaluation,a laboratory experiment was performed.In the laboratory,compared with perceived emotion,felt emotion was more suitable for predicting the degree of preference for the soundscape,while perceived emotion was more suitable for predicting the degree of appropriateness of the soundscape.Notably,a significant positive correlation was first found between "Appropriateness" and perceived emotion factor "Familiar".The preferred segment was a subset of the appropriate segment.There were one-to-one correlations between the five factors of felt emotion and five of the seven factors of perceived emotion,and the preference should then have priority when evaluating the soundscape.To further study the relationship between felt and perceived emotions in soundscape evaluation,field research was conducted.In the field,the ratings for felt and perceived emotions were significantly different and showed four relationships: Positive,Negative,No relationship,and No systematic relationship.Regardless of the degree of Preference or Appropriateness,the more extreme the evaluation value was,the more likely the relationship between emotions was to be "Positive relationship" among the four kinds of relationships.Only when the relationship was the "Positive relationship" among the four relationships,the degree of Preference and Appropriateness can be evaluated to the degree of extremely preferred and appropriate.Therefore,through the methods of questionnaire,interview and field measurement,the differences between felt and perceived emotions in sound source identification and soundscape evaluation were obtained in this study.Thus,to distinguish “felt emotion” from “perceived emotion” in soundscapes may bring about changes in evaluation and design,and this will help planners better understand how to design a place to provide its users with expected experience.This study will provide support for decision-making by planners and designers,lay the foundation for the formulation of policies and standards,and inspire more research results on emotion classification.