Informational coarsening in networked discrete public goods games

This paper studies how reducing the precision of available information -referred to as informational coarsening- affects cooperation in public goods games on networks. Contrary to standard intuition, we find that less precise information can promote cooperation by weakening the advantage of defectors and limiting defection cascades. This effect is especially strong in heterogeneous networks, where highly connected nodes amplify the stabilizing role of coarse information. While binary decisions mainly shift the conditions for cooperation, allowing multiple contribution levels leads to a stable form of “cautious” cooperation, with intermediate investment levels. Overall, our results show that the impact of information depends strongly on network structure: regular networks are largely insensitive, whereas heterogeneous networks benefit significantly from reduced information precision. These findings reveal a counterintuitive mechanism through which limited information can facilitate stable collective behavior in complex systems.