ABSTRACT
Psychological theories of risk found their basis in research that had proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s. Spearheaded by key scholars such as Paul Slovic and Barusch Fischhoff, the psychology of risk considers the ways in which a risk assessor’s own perceptions of risk will deviate from the ‘real’ risk. These deviations are a result of psychological heuristics and biases that stem from the assessor’s own experience, values and environment. This chapter discusses these theories to describe how psychology can affect risk scoring through highlighting the underlying principles of the theory. This is then linked to the water industry to describe how certain biases can affect water management. For example, reputational risk was scored highly among all participants within this study. This type of risk was often scored higher than other risks that are expected to be seen in water practice such as water quality, safety or operational risk. An over-abundance of caution towards reputational risk can result in a bias towards continuing to pursue business as usual practices over and above innovative new projects. This, in turn, can create barriers for water organisations wanting to engage in innovative solutions to water management issues.
