How Zero-Risk Bias Affects your Product

Zero-risk bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of risk in a sub-part over alternatives with greater overall risk reduction. It often manifests in cases where decision makers address problems concerning health, safety, and the environment. It’s also a tendency I see a lot in management teams.

Zero-risk bias is based on the way people feel better if a risk is eliminated instead of being merely mitigated. Scientists identified a zero-risk bias in responses to a questionnaire about a hypothetical cleanup scenario involving two hazardous sites X and Y, with X causing 8 cases of cancer annually and Y causing 4 cases annually. The respondents ranked three cleanup approaches: two options each reduced the total number of cancer cases by 6, while the third reduced the number by 5 and eliminated the cases at site Y. While the latter option featured the worst reduction overall, 42% of the respondents ranked it better than at least one of the other options. This conclusion resembled one from an earlier economics study that found people were willing to pay high costs to completely eliminate a risk.

Multiple real-world policies have been said to be affected by this bias. In American federal policy, the Delaney clause outlawing cancer-causing additives from foods (regardless of actual risk) and the desire for perfect cleanup of Superfund sites have…