Mapping leisure shopping trip decision making: validation of the CNET interview protocol

Qualitative research methods can provide an in-depth understanding of how people come to certain decisions, providing valuable input to ground behavioural assumptions in activity-based travel demand models and to implement high impact policy measures to change travel behaviour. The CNET interview protocol is a semi-structured personal interview method to elicit the mental representation of individuals’ decision making. There is a risk of bias caused by the interviewer’s interpretation of the respondents’ answers. Therefore, the quality of the CNET interview protocol is assessed by evaluating its trustworthiness using intercoder reliability tests. Krippendorff’s alpha is identified as the most appropriate measure. The intercoder reliability is sufficiently high. Consequently, the CNET interview protocol can be considered a valid method to measure and map individuals’ considerations in complex spatio-temporal decision problems. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013