Abstract

Risk perception is a complex process that could be influenced by biases and heuristics. In particular, this review is about the availability heuristic and how it could have an effect on risk perception of extreme natural events and epidemics. The scientific literature has been analyzed in a critical way, trying to understand how risk perception can change as a consequence of personal and collective events and their availability and relevance in people’s memory. Specifically, the focus is on studies that tried to understand if the warning of an epidemic (for example, Virus Ebola in 2014) or living, in first person, a pandemic (Covid-19) changed people’s risk perception. Another look, in this essay, is on people’s worry about climate change and related events, such as floods or heat waves. Lastly, the analysis examined papers that examined how the availability heuristic could be used in combination with the affect heuristic in order to increase prevention behaviors. This can be useful to accompany people to take preventive actions for disasters linked to natural phenomena, using information strategies that combine the two heuristics.