Separating the impact of exposure and personality in annoyance response to environmental stressors, particularly odors

Abstract Experimental and field studies illustrate the importance of person-related covariates in modulating annoyance responses to environmental stressors, particularly industrial odours. Experimental evidence is presented on trait-aspects of the annoyance-response, using traffic-noise, environmental tobacco-smoke (ETS), and odor (H 2 S) as controlled environmental stressors: Subjects preclassified as being high or low responders to either traffic noise or industrial odors in their everyday living environment exhibited similarly elevated or reduced reactivity to any of the stressors. Furthermore, field studies on exposure-response associations for odor-annoyance in the vicinity of odor-emitting industrial sources reveal that apart from age and perceived health general stress coping-styles modulate the degree of odor-annoyance: Problem-oriented coping activates, and avoidance-coping reduces the expression of annoyance to environmental odours. It is concluded that transactions between person-related variables and environmental perceptions need to be considered for a better understanding of psychological responses to environmental stressors in general, and to environmental odors in particular.

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