Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of the adoption of worldwide lockdown measures, the home environment has become the place where all the daily activities are taking place for many people. In these changed social and acoustical contexts, we wanted to evaluate the perception of the indoor acoustic environment in relation to traditional and new activities performed at home, i.e., relaxation, and working from home (WFH). Taking London as a case study, the present paper presents the results of an online survey administered to 464 home workers in January 2021. The survey utilized a previously developed model for the assessment of indoor soundscapes to describe the affective responses to the acoustic environments in a perceptual space defined by comfort (i.e. how comfortable or annoying the environment was judged) and content (i.e., how saturated the environment is with events and sounds) dimensions. A mixed-method approach was adopted to reinforce result validity by triangulating data from questionnaires and spontaneous descriptions given by participants. In this first part of the study, the main objectives were: (1) evaluating differences in soundscape evaluation, in terms of comfort and content dimensions, based on the activity performed at home, (2) identifying appropriate conditions for WFH and relaxation, and (3) investigating associations between psychological well-being and indoor soundscapes. The results showed that the environments were perceived as more comfortable and slightly fuller of content when rated in relation to relaxation than for WFH, thus suggesting a stricter evaluation of the acoustic environment in the latter case. As regards the second objective, spaces that were more appropriate for relaxation had high comfort, whereas spaces appropriate for WFH resulted more private and under control, i.e. with high comfort and low content scores. Lastly, better psychological well-being was associated with more comfortable soundscapes, both for WFH (r_s = 0.346, p < .0005), and relaxation (r_s = 0.353, p < .0005), and with lower content while WFH (r_s = −0.133, p = .004). The discussion points out the need of considering the implications of changed working patterns to rethink the design of soundscapes in residential buildings, also in relation to potential well-being outcomes that will be further investigated in the Part II of the study.

自 COVID-19 大流行爆发以来，由于采取了全球封锁措施，家庭环境已成为许多人进行所有日常活动的地方。在这些不断变化的社会和声学环境中，我们想要评估与在家进行的传统和新活动（即放松和在家工作 (WFH)）相关的室内声学环境的感知。本文以伦敦为例，介绍了 2021 年 1 月对 464 名家庭工作者进行的在线调查的结果。该调查利用先前开发的室内音景评估模型来描述对声学环境的情感反应舒适定义的感知空间（即判断环境舒适或烦人的程度）和内容（即环境对事件和声音的饱和程度）维度。采用混合方法，通过对问卷数据和参与者自发描述的数据进行三角测量来加强结果的有效性。在研究的第一部分，主要目标是：(1)根据在家进行的活动，在舒适度和内容维度方面评估音景评估的差异，(2) 确定 WFH 和放松的适当条件，以及(3) 调查心理健康与室内音景之间的关联。结果表明，人们认为环境更舒适，也更充实与 WFH 相比，在放松方面进行评级时的内容，因此表明在后一种情况下对声学环境进行更严格的评估。关于第二个目标，更适合放松的空间具有较高的舒适度，而适合 WFH 的空间则更加私密和可控，即舒适度高而内容得分低。最后，更好的心理健康与更舒适的音景相关，包括 WFH (r _s  = 0.346, p < .0005) 和放松 (r _s  = 0.353, p < .0005)，以及在 WFH时内容较少 (小号_{_} = −0.133，p = .004）。讨论指出需要考虑改变工作模式的影响，以重新思考住宅建筑中的音景设计，以及与将在研究的第二部分中进一步调查的潜在福祉结果相关的问题。