Conventional wisdom holds that public support for international cooperation is crucial to its viability and effectiveness. Elite debates focus heavily on procedural and outcome characteristics of international cooperation when assessing the latter. However, we know very little about whether and how citizens’ evaluation of international cooperation efforts are also based on such process and outcome considerations, as informed via cues they receive from various sources. Procedural characteristics pertain to how international cooperation and resulting agreements are established and implemented. Output characteristics pertain to how effective, costly, and advantageous international cooperation is. Based on three survey experiments in Germany and the United Kingdom (N = 3000 each), and with an empirical focus on transboundary air pollution in Europe, we examine (1) to what extent information on process and outcomes of international cooperation matters for public support, (2) whether information on the prospect of effective and advantageous outcomes reduces public demand for process improvement in international cooperation, and vice versa, and (3) whether high process quality could make citizens more tolerant of lower quality outcomes, and vice versa? The results show that, from the viewpoint of citizens, both process and outcome characteristics matter. While process-related evaluations of citizens are hardly affected by information on the prospect of high or low outcome quality, citizens are less tolerant of low outcome quality when process quality is low. These results suggest that enhancing process quality is worthwhile, particularly for policy challenges requiring long-term and incremental efforts.

中文翻译：

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公民是否根据有关程序和结果质量的信息来评估国际合作？

传统观点认为，公众对国际合作的支持对于其可行性和有效性至关重要。精英辩论在评估国际合作时将重点放在国际合作的程序和结果特征上。但是，我们对公民对国际合作努力的评估是否以及如何评估也基于这样的过程和成果考虑因素知之甚少。程序特征与如何建立和执行国际合作及由此产生的协议有关。产出特征与有效，昂贵和有利的国际合作有关。基于德国和英国（N = 3000个），并以经验为重点研究欧洲的跨界空气污染，我们研究（1）国际合作过程和结果的信息在多大程度上对公众支持至关重要；（2）关于有效和有利前景的信息是否结果减少了公众对国际合作中对流程改进的需求，反之亦然；（3）高质量的流程是否可以使公民更容忍质量较低的结果，反之亦然？结果表明，从公民的角度来看，过程和结果特征都很重要。虽然与过程相关的公民评估几乎不受结果质量高或低的信息的影响，但是当过程质量低时，公民对结果质量低的容忍度就较小。