Motivated by recent important discussions on the issue of risk perceptions for climate change-related events, we introduce a non-cooperative game setting where agents manage a common pool resource under a potential risk, and risk perceptions within the agents’ population are heterogeneous. Focusing on the effect of the polarization level and other population features (such as the intra-group structure), we show that the type of bias (overestimation versus underestimation biases) and the resource quality level before and after the occurrence of the shift have first-order importance on the qualitative nature of behavioral adjustments and on the pattern of resource conservation. When there are non-uniform biases within the population, the intra-group structure of the population qualitatively affects the degree of resource conservation. Moreover, unbiased agents may react in non-monotone ways to changes in the polarization level when faced with agents exhibiting different types of bias. Finally, the size of the unbiased agents’ sub-population does not qualitatively affect the effect of changes in the polarization level on individual behavioral adjustments, even though it affects the magnitude of the change.