Despite conditionality's limited effectiveness in shaping recipient behavior, donors persist in applying these mechanisms to development assistance. This study examines citizen support for aid conditionality in donor countries, arguing that conditionality serves as a control mechanism addressing principal-agent problems between voters and governments. When citizens lack direct oversight of aid utilization, conditionality signals accountability through explicit expectations, performance benchmarks, and consequences for non-compliance.

I theorize that different donor motivations drive support for distinct conditionality types. Governance problems threaten aid effectiveness and violate normative commitments, prompting citizens to favor negative conditionality (aid suspensions) as instrumental punishment and normative signaling. When recipient policies directly impact donor interests (trade, migration), positive conditionality (additional aid for policy changes) offers reciprocal benefits and enhanced legitimacy. Recipient characteristics—regime type, poverty level, and trade ties—moderate these preferences.

As a part of this project, I fielded conjoint experiments in Japan, as well as the United States, and Germany, with over 1,800 respondents per country. Participants evaluated hypothetical aid recipient profiles varying across policy transgressions, regime type, trade ties, development level, and conditionality decisions.

Findings reveal strong cross-national support for conditional over unconditional aid, with negative conditionality receiving particularly robust endorsement. Support for negative conditionality addressing governance issues holds in the United States and Japan but not Germany. Contrary to expectations, positive conditionality does not garner higher support for addressing trade and migration policies. Democratic regimes reduce support for aid suspensions while increasing support for positive approaches. Trade ties consistently increase support for positive conditionality, while recipient poverty decreases support for negative conditionality in the United States and Germany.