No, chest beating, etc. is not a player here. And, I'd NEVER suggest that a pilot go for the actual landing distance (60% of Landing Field Length) unless he has NO other choice.
I'm involved in writing procedures for my carrier, and this one is a "legal" question.
Here are a couple of examples:
(For simplicity sake, in all cases we'll assume that the flight is dispatched legally to a factored 60/40 runway that is dry and 10,000 feet long. That would be 6000' landing distance and 4000' buffer).
1. If due to favorable winds, I arrive at the destination a little heavier than planned, and now I require 200 feet more landing field length, must I hold until I burn down to the planed landing weight, or may I land, knowing I'm going to take another 120 feetof landing distance?
2. If the flight is dispatched dry, and there is a surprise shower enroute and now the runway is wet, am I legal to land?
3. If the flight was dispatched expecting 5 knots of headwind, and on arrival it's calm, am I legal to land?
4. If I expected to land on the 10,000 runway, and due to a change of runways I'm now being vectored to a 9000' runway, am I legal to land?
In the US, we dispatch to *airports*, not to specific runways. In many cases the pilot has no idea which runway the Dispatcher used in planning the flight.