Another relevant psychology theory pertaining to human wildlife conflict is how we perceive risk caused by such animals. This theory is essential in studying wildlife- human conflict, as over or under reactions to animal attacks can be far from the truth and cause misjudgement or misperception of animal behavior.
According to the risk perception theory, we often overestimate low probability things and underestimate high probability things. This is coined primary bias, and may cause us to misperceive how frequently certain events occur.
Another form of cognitive bias is called the secondary bias, and this is likely due to the availability heuristic, which dictates that events which are more sensationalised are often at the forefront of things we remember, causing these events to be more available during recall. Therefore, how people represent and perceive risk is highly subjective (Harkins, 2013).
For instance, after a woman got attacked by a wild boar while walking her dogs, local news report outlet TODAYonline interviewed Singaporeans, who think that wild boar attacks are now commonplace in Singapore. The truth is though wild boar attacks are becoming more frequent, they are still relatively rare in Singapore, and AVA says that there is an very low probability that you will encounter a wild boar attack, especially if you have not provoked the animal.
Thus, we can see that how sensationalised an animal attack is will inevitably affect the perception of how frequent or severe such animal attacks are in Singapore: this will give rise to necessary fear, causing public outcry over such animals as they are seen as dangerous and malicious. The end result of a lot of these cases is animal culling, as such animals are viewed as a threat to human safety, while in reality the severity of the attacks are not as high as people perceive them to be.
Also, it must be noted that what constitutes a risk differ for every individual- Risk perception is very important for risk management.