## 2 Materials and Methods
### Questionnaire Survey  
The comparative study was conducted through an on-site questionnaire survey during the summer period, both in China and Croatia, with the same structure and context, in Chinese in China and in Croatian (for domestic people) or English (for tourists) in Croatia. The respondents were asked about their gender, age, education level, living place (local or non-local), visit frequency and visit purpose, as shown in Table 2. A database was established with demographic/social information, including gender (male and female); age (groups 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64); education level (primary, middle, undergraduate and postgraduate); living place (local and non-local); visit frequency (first time, rarely, sometimes, often and very often) and visit purpose (travel, leisure, passing by, working and other).  
To examine the relationship between overall satisfaction and environmental indicators satisfaction, the evaluations of sound and other parameters were investigated, including temperature, light, wind, air, health, odor, visual, urban planning, traffic and people. Linear scales were generally employed in the questionnaire. A five-point scale was used for sound satisfaction, from \(-2\) (very dissatisfied), to \(2\) (very satisfied). A nine-point scale was employed for environmental satisfaction, from \(-4\) (very dissatisfied), to \(4\) (very satisfied), which enabled obtaining much more detailed responses. Respondents were asked to evaluate sound environment and other environmental indicators, as mentioned above. In the questionnaire, subjective descriptions were given together with the linear scale numbers.  
Additionally, the differences of tranquility importance and soundscape descriptors between China and Croatia in urban public open spaces were also examined. A five-point linear scale has been used for tranquility importance, namely from \(-2\) (not very important), to \(2\) (very important). Four pairs of soundscape indices have been selected as soundscape factors of relaxation and communication [1], namely unpleasant-pleasant, agitating-calming, boring-interesting and uneventful-eventful, and a nine-point linear scale has been employed from \(-4\) to \(4\).  
To examine the relationship and differences between perceived sound and satisfaction evaluation, the respondents were also asked to describe the noticed sounds they heard in public open spaces in China and Croatia during the interview period. The sound sources were listed depending on each of the case study sites, including natural sounds (water, wind and animals), human sounds (talking, walking, selling and children), electronic sounds (broadcast, music and phone), and mechanical sounds (traffic, horn sound and mechanical source). A five-point linear scale has been used, namely: \(1\), do not hear at all; \(2\), a little; \(3\), moderately; \(4\), a lot and \(5\), dominates completely.  
During the field questionnaire survey, there were a total of \(706\) respondents. All respondents were selected randomly at the case study sites. The percentage of male was \(53.9\%\) and female was \(46.1\%\) in China, compared to \(47.8\%\) of male and \(52.2\%\) female respondents in Croatia. The age of all respondents was distributed from \(18\) to \(64\) years. People aged \(18\)-\(34\) years were the main respondent group in China, around \(63.7\%\), whereas the main respondent group in Croatia was aged \(18\)-\(44\) years, around \(84.4\%\). In this research, there were less than \(30\) people older than \(64\) years of age in both countries that participated in the questionnaire. Therefore, the results from this age group have been excluded from this paper. The visit purposes were mainly leisure, passing by and traveling, both in China and Croatia.