A theoretical gap in the audience cost theory is the missing analysis of its central feature: the audience. This article defines the audience as a group composed of individuals and societal actors that can punish a government and pay attention to the issue being negotiated. Thus, the audience can vary depending on the issue salience. When the issue salience is low, the audience comprises just interest groups and the attentive public. Yet, the higher the issue salience, the more voters of the general public also become part of the audience. The audience’s composition in turn determines the level of the audience costs. Because the general public tends to evaluate national honor more highly, be less informed and have less well-defined preferences than interest groups and the attentive public, the audience costs should be higher when the issue salience is high. Furthermore, the audience can take actions that prevent the effect of audience costs or generate exogenous audience costs.

受众成本理论的理论空白是其核心特征（受众）的缺失分析。本文将听众定义为由个人和社会行为者组成的群体，他们可以惩罚政府并关注正在谈判的问题。因此，听众可以根据问题的显着性而有所不同。当问题的关注度很低时，受众仅包括利益集团和关注周到的公众。但是，问题的显着性越高，更多的公众投票者也成为听众的一部分。受众的构成反过来决定了受众成本的水平。因为与利益集团和关注的公众相比，公众倾向于对国家荣誉进行更高的评价，了解更少，知情偏好也更少，问题重要性高时，受众成本应该更高。此外，听众可以采取防止听众成本影响或产生外来听众成本的行动。