Living close to wind turbines –a qualitative approach to a deeper understanding

摘要

People living in the vicinity of wind turbines are surprisingly often annoyed byswishing noise. Previous studies have found variance in annoyance that could only to a part beexplained by A-weighted sound pressure levels and subjective variables such as attitude to windturbines’ visual impact on the landscape. To deepen the understanding and to develop a conceptualmodel of people’s experiences of wind turbines, an inductive approach was needed. In-depthinterviews with 15 informants were carried out. The informants were strategically chosen to form aheterogeneous group based on variations in their self-ratings of annoyance due to wind turbine noise,calculated noise exposure from wind turbines, and gender. The interviews were analysed according tothe constant comparative method for discovering grounded theory. Informants annoyed by windturbine noise perceived the impact of turbines as a serious intrusion of their privacy. The force of theviolation experienced was partly determined by the informants’ conception of the living environmentas a place where audible and visual impact from wind turbines did not belong. Categories increasingor decreasing the intrusion were experiences of not being believed, being subjected to injustice,lacking influence, and being out of control. The informants chose different coping strategies, such ascomplaining to local authorities or building a closed-in veranda in order to reduce their annoyance, butmainly tried to forget about the noise with different degrees of success. The qualitative approach in thestudy revealed new aspects of the complex phenomena of low exposure and annoyance.