Socioeconomic Dimensions Ruling Traffic Noise Compliance Rate in Urban Forests: A Lesson from National-Wide and Yearly Records Through the Pandemic

Creating sustainable cities requires effective traffic noise reduction strategies that use urban green spaces as nature-based solutions. Regional studies highlight the role of GSA in coping with noise annoyance, leaving knowledge gaps using day/night records of compliance rates to detect spatiotemporal mitigations across cities with varied socioeconomic states on the national scale. It was initially agreed that the COVID pandemic led to noise reduction, but this was learnt as a lesson using data from 31 Chinese cities (2018–2021). The relationships between GSA, socioeconomic factors, and daytime/nighttime compliance were examined using multivariate linear regression and maximum likelihood estimation. Novel GAI integrated with GSA and socioeconomic data. The results showed a counterintuitive negative correlation between total GSA and compliance but a positive correlation between GPC and daytime compliance. The pandemic initially boosted compliance, but this effect was not sustained. The compliance rate increased in national cities from 2018 to 2021, predominantly during the day. The positive pandemic-induced compliance increased the importance of considering human behavioral changes in urban greening in a socioeconomic background. We recommend incorporating socioeconomic factors, such as GPC, in the preparation for policymaking to reduce traffic noise when suffering unforeseen events. It is time to move beyond the sole focus on the role of green space areas in a sustainable city with quiet traffic.