The effect of the sound experience process on the soundscape naturalness in urban parks

In previous soundscape studies, the soundscape naturalness has been an important metric to evaluate the quality of soundscapes in urban parks. However, the effect of the sound experience process on the soundscape's naturalness has not received much attention. Thus, this study investigates the effect of the sound experience process on the assessment of soundscape naturalness in a typical urban park through a soundwalk survey. The results are as follows: first, different sound experience processes affect the assessment of soundscape naturalness in the urban park. Second, the results of the soundscape assessment in the sound experience processes conform to the peak-end rule. At the end of the soundscape process, the peak assessment of the soundscape naturalness appears at the end of the sound experience process, which significantly affects the overall assessment. Third, comparing different processes of sound source change experiences, it is found that the soundscape naturalness of the artificial-natural sound experience process is higher than that of the natural-artificial sound experience process (p < 0.05). Consequently, the design of natural sounds in the path of urban parks is expected to intervene in visitors' soundscape naturalness experience.