There's an interesting psychological principle there, known as "boundary avoidance tracking".
It works like this - if I ask you to ride a bicycle down a white line in the road, staying always within 6" of the centre of the line, you probably won't find it very difficult.
However, if I ask you to ride a bicycle along the top of a 12" wide wall, 10ft high - whilst technically it's the same task, for a couple of psychological reasons you'll find that extremely difficult.
This runway (which I'm sorry to say I've never landed on - I had planned to, but conditions conspired against me that week) is a bit like the 12" wide 10ft tall wall. Pilots are likely to fixate on the boundary *which they do not wish to cross* (the edge of the cliff, and once in a while this creates a tragedy.
If wind, runway slope, length, width, etc. were all the same - but it was surrounded by grass, I'll bet that nobody would ever miss the runway.
G