Strategic risk management - Essay Example

People respond to risks and hazards in a manner that is in line with their perception of that particular risk. It is in order to therefore assert that perception affects behavior and action. Difficulties are likely to come up as a result of inaccurate beliefs linked to the hazard and its consequences. People act and perceive risks and hazards in two major ways; one as feelings where individuals involve their intuition and instincts to danger and secondly, involving logic and reasoning and scientific deliberations.

To understand these aspects as a human factor, it is indeed necessary to understand what people perceive as a hazard or risk and what they base their perception on (Environment and Behavior, 2000). Risk analysis in everyday life is received quickly and automatically by the feelings that arise from what has been experienced before. Strong emotions that human beings experience such as fear and anger play a role in risks as just a feeling. Fear makes the risks estimates scale up while anger attenuates them.

Fear stems up from uncertainty and controlling a situation while anger stems up from certainty and control of an individual. Affect, which is the quality of being good or bad has been identified by scholars as a key to motivating human behavior (Environment and Behavior, 2000). Pleasant feelings will motivate people in to expecting positive actions while unpleasant feelings will drive people to avoid or expect negative actions. Intuitions gut feelings and instincts are what human beings rely upon from to determine what is dangerous or not.

This is evident in that it is the feelings that people relied upon in the past for their survival for example to determine what animal was approachable or not. People judge a risk according to how they feel about it and how they how they think about it. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development & International Transport Forum, (2009), as much as the aspect of