The effects of the interaction between sewage odour and sounds on crowd behaviours in urban waterfront park

Abstract

Sewage odour is a common pollution odour source produced by urban water bodies and negatively impacts people’s behaviour. This study aimed to explore whether sound could change this negative effect. Therefore, a behaviour-observation experiment was conducted in a typical urban waterfront park using the sewage odour as the source of the pollution smell and playing typical sound sources in urban environments (music and fan sounds) with and without odour. The results showed that for crowd paths, music could significantly attract a crowd, fan sound or sewage odour could keep the crowd away. Furthermore, when there was sewage odour, the effects of the trends of approaching or receding from the sound sources caused by the music and fan sounds, respectively, have been strengthened. Sound and odour had relatively independent impacts on the crowd speed and duration time, reflected in the fact that music significantly reduced the crowd speed whereas fan sound and sewage odour significantly improved it. Music significantly increased the crowd duration time, while fan sound and sewage odour significantly reduced it. On this basis, the independent effects of sound and odour were superimposed, and the positive effect of music was stronger than the negative effect of sewage odour.