Towards a common standard – A reporting checklist for web-based stated preference valuation surveys and a critique for mode surveys

Historically, web-based economic valuation surveys published in the literature have generally been rather sparse on providing details of their web development and administration. Given the many survey development choices and consequences that are particular to web-surveys, the lack of a common reporting standard on the survey administration part can make it very difficult to judge the quality and validity of results obtained in a web-based valuation survey. This paper provides such a reporting checklist for stated preference valuation surveys developed for and administered through the web. The checklist is developed based on the bulk of knowledge gained so far with web-based surveys. This knowledge is compiled based on an extensive review of relevant literature dated from 2001 to beginning of 2015 in the Scopus database. Somewhat surprisingly, relatively few papers are concerned with survey mode effects or with the new opportunities for experimentation that the web survey mode presents. In relation to this, our paper also outlines future research opportunities and directions that would seem particularly relevant to further investigate and validate the increasing use of web-based questionnaires for economic valuation surveys.