The authors conducted a secondary analysis using individual data obtained from previous social surveys to summarize the effects of combined exposure to railway noise and vibration on community response in Japan. In order to obtain the detailed understanding of the effects of exposure to noise and vibration, it is desirable to have a wide range of both exposure levels. With this in mind, the authors aggregated data for Shinkansen and conventional railways without the distinction. We addressed respective proportion of highly annoyed people and highly self-reported sleep disturbed people due to railway noise. The analysis revealed that the interaction terms for exposure levels were significant for both annoyance and sleep disturbance. However, the magnitude of the effects of noise and vibration exposure differed between high-level annoyance and high-level sleep disturbance. For high level of annoyance, noise exposure is the primary factor, while composite vibration exposure is secondary. On the other hand, for high level of sleep disturbance, the effects of noise and vibration exposure are comparable and vibration has a stronger effect than noise compared to high levels of annoyance.
Yokoshima et al. (2025) studied this question.