Acoustical Comfort Perceptions at Eatery Places in Malaysia

Background noises not only affect customers’ behaviour, satisfaction and perception towards acoustic comfort in the restaurant but also customers’ willingness to spend money and time in restaurant

Eatery places are where the business of exchanging prepared food and drinks with money took place. The typologies of the eatery places are varying from a high end fine dining to family style, casual dining, inexpensive cafeterias and fast food range. These eatery places’ acoustical environments can influence the diner to return to the same eatery places as he or she enjoyed and satisfied with the dining experiences. Background noises not only affect customers’ behaviour, satisfaction and perception towards acoustic comfort in the restaurant but also customers’ willingness to spend money and time in restaurant.

Purpose of this study is to determine the eatery places typology in measuring level of acoustical comfort of the diners while having their foods. A pre pilot survey has been carried out to foresee the frequencies of dining in four eatery places typologies. The surveys also asked about diners’ perception on acoustical comfort level during the dining period in each typology. This pilot was carried out with random online surveys.

A hundred and fifty-three respondents completed the questionnaire concerning their demographic background, frequency of dining in four typologies of eatery places as well as their perceptions on acoustical comfort in each typology. The results indicated that the highest frequencies of visited eatery place were ‘once in a month’ at midscale eatery places which was the family dining restaurant. In relation with the perceptions toward acoustical comfort, the respondents have moderate comfortable level in three typologies of eatery places and very comfortable in upscale eatery places.

This ongoing research is expected to provide a determination of eatery places typologies to carry out the onsite measurement of acoustical comfort in classifying the acoustical comfort categories in dining atmosphere of eatery places.

Contributor:
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nazli Che Din
Department of Architecture. Faculty of Built Environment
Universiti Malaya (UM)
 nazlichedin@um.edu.my