Economic Benefits of a Program to Reduce Transportation and Community Noise - a Contingent Valuation Survey

Environmental valuation techniques can be successfully used to estimate the social costs of noise annoyance experienced by households. A Contingent Valuation (CV) survey of 600 households affected by noise in two Norwegian communities found a mean willingness-to-pay (WTP) of about 120 euro/household/year for a public program that would reduce transportation and community noise. The program would eliminate indoor and reduce outdoor noise annoyance by 50 %, and eliminate noise annoyance in parts of the nearby recreational forest area. Results indicate that neither recorded noise levels (in dBA) from different sources nor level of annoyance stated by respondents had a significant effect on their WTP. However, whether respondents felt annoyed by road traffic noise or not in Oslo had a significant effect on the probability of supporting the program at a cost. Similar effects were not found for railway and aircraft noise.