Costs and benefits of US aviation noise land-use policies

• We examine residential land-use policies at US commercial airports.
• Willingness-to-pay for abatement calculated from hedonic pricing meta-study.
• Cost of health impacts estimated for aviation noise induced hypertension, myocardial infarction, and stroke.
• Costs often outweigh benefits of land use policies, but costs and benefits are the same order of magnitude.
• Land use policies are more cost-effective than early phase-out of noisier aircraft.

Aircraft noise affects human health and welfare. One method US airports use to mitigate the impact of noise on nearby residents is through sound insulation and residential land acquisition projects. Costs of residential insulation and acquisition projects are taken from federal grant summaries while the benefits of noise reduction are calculated as the combined willingness-to-pay for abatement and direct and indirect costs of illness from hypertension, myocardial infarction, and stroke. We show that the average cost of sound insulation projects is $15,600 per person affected while that of land acquisition is $48,900 per person affected. We find that for only in 15% of projects do the benefits to residents from willingness-to-pay for reduction and reduced risk of mortality and morbidity exceed the costs of sound insulation for residences exposed to 65 dB Day Night Level (DNL) of noise. Our estimates suggest that noise insulation projects are more cost-effective than fleet wide mandatory aircraft retirement.