PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS IN SENSORY EVALUATION ON ODORS FROM BUILDING MATERIAL

There are a lot of aspects for evaluation of odor. Not only the hedonics aspects but also thepleasantness aspects are very important for the building design. Authors have investigated the sensoryevaluation of odor from building materials and turned our attentions to the psychological process ofodor evaluation. In this paper, odors emitted from four building materials that is wood, wood flooring,Tatami (Japanese traditional rush mat) and concrete were adopted and the sensory evaluation tests byhuman subjects were conducted. Odor intensity, hedonics, preference and acceptability were voted byten young subjects. The impressions of odor represented by familiarity, freshness, complexity andwarmness were evaluated as well. The correlations of each evaluation were investigated and tried tomake a model of the psychological process of sensory evaluation by means of multiple regressionanalysis. As a result, odor acceptability was proved to be largely influenced by odor intensity, secondlythe hedonics of odor led the evaluation of acceptability. Odor impressions decide the hedonics of odor,and especially the familiarity and complexity were proved to be the important factors.