Complementarity and information in collective action

We study how accuracy and commonality of information affect the incentives of agents who voluntarily participate in collective action. Our focus is on the interaction of information and individual efforts’ complementarity. We use a private provision of a public good model that captures high complementarity through the weakest-link technology and low complementarity through the best-shot technology. Increases in the accuracy of information lead to more dispersion of individual contributions and increases (decreases) in expected provision if complementarity is low (high). Increases in commonality raise (lower) all contributions if complementarity is high (low). We interpret our results in light of recent developments for information diffusion: if one takes the view that like-minded agents are now receiving information that is less accurate and more likely to be the same than in the past, then our model predicts increased success for activities with high complementarity such as protests, and a negative effect on the development of new ideas, such as slogans or “memes,” activities that by and large depend on the best individual effort and so display low complementarity.