A taxonomy of sound sources in restaurants

• Restaurants are complex environments where all our senses are engaged. Physical and psychoacoustic factors have been shown to be associated with perceived environmental quality in restaurants. More or less designable sound sources such as background music, voices, and kitchen noises are believed to be important in relation to the overall perception of the soundscape. Previous research publications have suggested typologies and other structured descriptions of sound sources for some environmental contexts, such as urban parks and offices, but there is no detailed account that is relevant to restaurants. While existing classification schemes might be extendable, an empirical approach was taken in the present work. We collected on-site data in 40 restaurants (n = 393), including perceptual ratings, free-form annotations of characteristic sounds and whether they were liked or not, and free-form descriptive words for the environment as a whole. The annotations were subjected to analysis using a cladistic approach and yielded a multi-level taxonomy of perceived sound sources in restaurants. Ten different classification taxa were evaluated by comparing the respondents' Liking of sound sources, by categories defined in the taxonomy, and their Pleasantness rating of the environment as a whole. Correlation analysis revealed that a four-level clade was efficient and outperformed alternatives. Internal validation of the Pleasantness construct was made through separate ratings (n = 7) of on-site free-form descriptions of the environment. External validation was made with ratings from a separate listening experiment (n = 48). The two validations demonstrated that the four-level Sound Sources in Restaurants (SSR) clade had good construct validity and external robustness. Analysis  of the data revealed two findings. Voice-related characteristic sounds including a ‘people’ specifier were more liked than those without such a specifier (d = 0.14 SD), possibly due to an emotional crossmodal association mechanism. Liking of characteristic sounds differed between the first and last annotations that the respondents had made (d = 0.21 SD), which might be due to an initially positive bias being countered by exposure to a task inducing a mode of critical listening. We believe that the SSR taxonomy will be useful for field research and simulation design. The empirical findings might inform theory, specifically research charting the perception of sound sources in multimodal environments.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Övrig annan teknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Övrig annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Other Humanities not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Livsmedelsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Food Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

soundscape

sound source

classification

perception

multimodal

restaurant

design

Art, Technology and Design

Konst, teknik och design

Arkitektur

Architecture

Technology and Health

Teknik och hälsa

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)