The perceptual process of smellscapes

Smellscape, as discussed earlier in chapter 2, refers to people’s perceptions of the smell environment of a place in its context. Perception, according to Rodaway (2002), involves both sensation and cognition. Henshaw (2013) further explained that the olfactory sensation refers to physiological and neurological processes in which sensations are registered by olfactory receptors and transmitted by trigeminal nerves to the limbic system. However, cognition of the smell environment is a thinking process, providing analysed information, understanding and evaluation of smell environments in the general context of places and perceivers. Waskul and Vannini (2008) conceptualised the perception of smells as a somatic work similarly constructed among people, which is a process of the perceiver making sense of his/her olfactory experiences through identifications, evaluations, reflections and activities.

Perception of the smell environment in this sense is a process conducted by the perceiver through detection, interpretation, evaluation and action to the components constituting smellscapes. However, what initiates and constitutes the perception of the smell environment in a place has not yet been discussed in existing literature.

The enquiry of participants’ perceptual process starts with an interview question at the beginning of each conversation:’ Did you smell anything?’ Similar and immediate responses were found among all the interviews in both studied cases to this question: ‘Not really…’ or

‘I can smell…’. People would mostly not give a definite ‘No’, but were more likely to say,

‘Not really/nothing particular’ instead. For example:

‘Nothing particular, there is nothing like or dislike of this space in my head. It is very neutral. I think the weather is also a contributing aspect to the smell environment, because if it is in summer, it is easier for you to detect more smells. But now, it is winter, it is just neutral.’ S16

From their descriptions, ‘not really/nothing particular’ mostly meant that there is nothing that smells too bad/good or strong or different from their expectations to catch their attention in the first place. For example, at the platform, one participant answered: ‘Really really strong train smell, I can smell the fumes.’ S06

Most of the time, when they say ‘Not really/nothing particular’, they are surrounded by

‘background smells’: normal, light and mixed. However, why do people take such smells as

‘not really/nothing particular’? It is argued that people experience a process that involves adaptation, fatigue and habituation when encountering repeated smells (Naus 1984;

Schiffman 1990). This process may result in less sensitivity to noticing such smells. People are exposed to the background smells in their living environment on a daily basis. If there is no significant change in smells from one space to another, they will rarely pay attention to these background smells. Or in their terms, they think such smells as too ‘normal’ to be noticed. For example:

‘Nothing particular. It is close to the smell of air on a normal urban street. ( )’ W06

‘Not really, it is just a hot day, I can just smell a bit of cars. But it is really mixed with the hot weather and I feel it is normal. I can’t really tell. It is nothing bad really.

Yeah, nothing else.’ S05

In the last example above, the participant explained of detecting ‘only a bit of cars’ after saying ‘not really (detecting any smells)’. The immediate response of ‘not really’ lies behind her familiarity of detecting a bit cars mixed with other environmental background smells in the hot weather. Such smells to her is ‘normal’, which explains her not paying immediate attention to the smells of cars at the beginning. Normal smells in this sense are smells as expected, commonly and frequently perceived in participants’ daily experiences. When asked whether they detected any smells, people tended to find things ‘abnormal’. If there are no smells that match their criteria, they will comment as ‘No/not really/nothing particular’.

However, this would also bring to the ethical issue of taking a participant onsite to make them aware of the smell environment and their subconscious reactions to the smell environment. This ‘a bit car smell’ would probably not be noticing in her daily routines. As many participants have said after the walk:

‘Normally, I won’t notice such smells when I am in the station. Usually, I would be rushing to the station. Unless the smells are too strong or pungent, I won’t be able to

notice. ’ W10

‘It is a different experience through to experience through smells. But I won’t notice any difference if I am alone.’ S03

‘You know when I am walking I don’t really take notice of smells. I just take care about the surrounding, what I see, you know. So now, when you tell me to smell something, it’s more different. I begin to take notice of smells.’ S08

This ‘not noticing’ response is very commonly found when smells in the environment are at a background level with appropriate exchange of air, and there are no liked or disliked smells.

However, as illustrated in the first example above, people also may not notice smells when they are in active movements, i.e. running and walking fast. It is likely that people have lower sensory detections with active movements (walking and running) than passive movements (sitting and standing), which is influenced by their attention to movement or the surrounding environment (Chapman et al. 1987). However, when there are smells that catch people’s attention, or at a high intensity, people will immediately notice the smell environment with further cognitive processes, involving evaluations, psychological and behavioural reactions, such as like-dislike feeling, approaching and avoiding behaviours (Largey and Watson 1972).

The behavioural responses may lead to changes to the general context or the positions of

perceivers in the environment, such as empting or covering trash bins and changing the walking route. For example :

‘If I smelt something really unpleasant, I would definitely leave for some place without such smells. However, if I smelt it when I wan queuing for boarding, it wouldn’t be possible to change my position. In this case, I have to ignore it purposely.

’ W16

However, as also shown in the above example, participants sometimes had psychological reactions to perceived smell environment whilst did not always have a behavioural response as a result that people chose to ignore the smells. This ‘ignoring’ happened after evaluating the influence on people’s activities and purposes of using the space. For example, at the Lower Ground Waiting Area in Wuchang where the smellscape was rated as very unpleasant, there were still many people sitting there waiting (see Figure 5.13). In this case, people did detect strong smells of toilets but preferred a seat with an unpleasant smellscape to no seat with a better smellscape. Response to the smell environment depends on people’s evaluations and their purposes for using the space, which stimulates an iterative process of perceiving the changing smell environment.

Figure 5.17 illustrates the perceptual process found in the studied case which moves from sensation to cognition to response in perceiving the smell environment, involving the components of perceivers, smells and smell sources, physical environment and context. In the perceptual process, people are making sense of what they perceived in the environment:

smells, smell sources, the physical environment, temporary elements onsite, context and themselves. The ways of interpreting the smellscapes will be discussed in the next section through perceptual patterns emerged in from advanced coding and memo-writing to map out the relationships between components from different categories.

Figure 5.17 A smellscape perceptual process generated from the studied cases