Monetary valuation of road noise. Residential property prices as an indicator of the acoustic climate quality

Soundscape as an inherent part of landscape provides ecosystem services, first of all spiritual and symbolic services as well as educational and esthetic ones. The value of these services depends on the ability to hear sounds of nature. However, more often people can hear only sounds generated by humans and those generated by organisms and the physical environment become very desirable. Reports of the European Commission confirm that the noise in the environment is a very serious threat to public health and that the noise exposure in Europe is increasing. It is estimated that the main threat to the acoustic climate is road noise, both in the cities and outside them. Although the soundscape is a non-market good, the attempts of its evaluation have been increasing, usually by estimating the economic costs arising from exposure to noise: lost productivity, medical expenses, decreases in revenues from tourism. The authors used the hedonic pricing method to estimate the decline in undeveloped property prices associated with road noise around the city of Poznan. To extract the effects of noise also other factors that contribute to the land price were considered. The model chosen by using multiple regression showed, that plots located in the zone with noise exceedance at night were about 57% cheaper than those located outside this zone. The results can be helpful in spatial planning, especially for estimating costs of road investments in environmental and economic impact assessments.