Social Inequities in Transportation Noise Exposures in the United States: Urbanicity Modifies that Relationship Between Social Vulnerability and Noise Exposure

Prior research has explored the unequal distribution of environmental hazards; however, little is known about the relationship between social vulnerability and transportation noise exposure in the U.S., particularly in relation to urbanization levels. We sought to examine the relationship between the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and transportation noise exposure across the U.S. at the census-tract level and assessed the moderating effects of urbanization. Multivariate linear regression models were used to assess the relationship between SVI — a composite index consisting of thematic indicators for socioeconomic status (SES), household characteristics, racial/ethnic minority status, and housing/transportation factors — and population-weighted transportation noise exposure at the census-tract level. An interaction term was used in the model to assess the moderating effects of urbanization. Principal component analysis (PCA) and regression (PCR) were employed to extract the features that correlate with specific SVI themes and examine their relationship to transportation noise exposure. Findings from PCA and PCR reveal that in the urban area context, census tracts that score high on all four vulnerability themes of the SVI are positively associated with transportation noise exposure, while an opposite relationship is observed for census tracts that score high in vulnerability with respect to racial/ethnic minority status and household characteristics, but not particularly high in vulnerability for SES or housing/transportation factors, regardless of the urbanization level. Our study underscores the impact of distinct social vulnerability components on transportation noise exposure, revealing variations across different urbanization strata.