Seen and Not Seen: Social Visibility, Identity Signaling, and Pro‐Environmental Behavior

ABSTRACT Collective environmental sustainability depends, in part, on individuals acting pro‐environmentally. Individual environmental behaviors have social consequences as well as an environmental consequence. These behaviors signal who a person is and how a person wants to be seen by others. People anticipate that their actions will have social meaning to others, and this meaning is magnified when the behavior is socially visible to others. Research in fields such as environmental psychology and consumer behavior have both measured and manipulated social visibility, and yet there is no theoretical framework to organize this literature. We propose that social visibility will impact environmental action depending on characteristics of the actor (e.g., identity, social status), the behavior (e.g., conspicuousness, costliness), and the observer (e.g., social closeness, perceived identity). With this framework, we seek to understand when and why being seen and not seen while engaging in environmental action influences both the performance of the action, its meaning to the self, and the action's perceived meaning to others. We also identify methodological practices that are informed by this theoretical framework, and future areas of research that hold promise for practitioners and researchers to more effectively use visibility to promote environmental behaviors.