Simone Piras

Agricultural / Rural Economist
Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences
E: simone.piras@hutton.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1224 395 399
I am agricultural and rural economist working in the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences (SEGS) department of the James Hutton Institute. My research interests revolve around the decision-making of food value chain stakeholders - primarily farmers and consumers - and of rural dwellers in the presence of trade-offs and social dilemmas. In the past, I conducted research on smallholder farming in European post-socialist economies, food and food waste behaviours, and rural outmigration, among others. Besides statistics and econometrics, my methodological tools include survey design and analysis, economic experiments (including behavioural and choice experiments), counterfactual methods for impact assessment, and agent-based modelling.

Biography

I have an interdisciplinary background in development studies, with a focus on economic and socio-political development, and a PhD in Agri-food Economics and Statistics received from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2016. During my academic career, I have been a visiting researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Germany, where I also contributed to the World Bank’s “Moldova Poverty Assessment 2016”; I conducted fieldwork in the Republic of Moldova; and I acquired further study and work experience in Estonia and Georgia. Prior to joining the James Hutton Institute, I carried out a three-year post-doc on behavioural economics applied to the case of food waste at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the University of Bologna, working on European and regional projects. I joined the James Hutton Institute in October 2018 as junior researcher, becoming senior researcher in 2021.

Research

My research activities focuses on people, and their decision-making within their socio-economic environment. My research projects fall within two main areas: (1) the economics of food value chains, with a focus on loss and waste, and consumers’ and farmers’ behaviours; and (2) the socio-economic development of rural areas, with a focus on the relationship between economic and demographic change, including migration. I am currently working on the following projects:

  • H2020 FOODLAND “Food and Local, Agricultural and Nutritional Diversity” (2020-2024), coordinated by the University of Bologna, Italy. This project aims at promoting diversity of diets and more resilient supply chains in six countries from Northern (Morocco, Tunisia) and Eastern (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) Africa. Our SEGS team have been implementing surveys and lab-in-the-field economic experiments with rural smallholders and urban consumers to identify the behavioural determinants of their production and consumption choices, and their decision-making patterns with respect to innovation adoption and innovative practices. We lead Task 5.9 “Innovation validation”, which conducts randomised controlled trials in three countries to assess the efficacy of different dissemination strategies for innovation uptake and the impact of the innovations on farm performance and wellbeing indicators in turn.
  • H2020 LOWINFOOD “Actor Design of Low-Waste Food Value Chains through the Demonstration of Innovative Solutions to Reduce Food Losses and Waste” (2020-2025), coordinated by the University of Tuscia, Italy. The project aims at testing a number of innovations to reduce food waste along food supply chains. Our SEGS team have been leading Work Package 4 “Innovations to prevent and reduce fish losses and waste”, where we promote the dialogue among stakeholders of the fish supply chain in Scotland and Germany, and Task 1.3 “Evaluation of economic and social impact”, where we assess the economic and social impacts of deploying the innovations in all the food value chains considered in the project.
  • H2020 RADIANT “ReAlising Dynamic vAlue chaiNs for undeuTilised crops” (2021-2025), coordinated by Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal. The RADIANT project brings together a consortium of value chain actors, researchers and end users, to codevelop solutions and tools for boosting agrobiodiversity via dynamic value chains of underutilised crops (UCs). We lead Task 5.3 “Farmers’ and consumers’ expectations and preferences for UCs”, where we use choice experiments implemented first within focus groups and then on large online samples, to identify barriers to the uptake of UCs by farmers, and measure consumers’ willingness to pay for derived food products. We test five UCs in as many workshops across different European pedoclimatic regions.
  • RESAS JHI-E1-1 “Informing a socially and spatially just future for the Scottish rural economy: pinpointing opportunities, assets and support needs” (2022-2027), part of the “Rural Futures” Theme. This project uses mixed (qualitative and quantitative) data and methods to create an advanced model of Scotland’s rural economy and provide insights into how the benefits of plausible and aspirational economic scenarios could intersect with community- and place-based assets to support economic development and greater wellbeing. I lead Activity 4.1 “Understanding behavioural factors”, which identifies preferences and behaviours of rural residents with respect to living places, transport and food consumptions, and potential for change, by means of choice experiment surveys and experimental economic approaches.
  • RESAS JHI-B1-3 “The impact of novel crops and farming practices on the Scottish agricultural landscape” (2022-2027), part of Theme B “Sustainable Food System and Supply”. This project aims to develop an understanding of the factors driving change in farming practice across scales and environments, identifying the barriers preventing innovation and supporting the development of novel crops and management system. Our SEGS team is responsible of Work Package 4 “Impact of novel crops and systems on rural economies and the wider society”, which first uses a discrete choice experiment to elicit consumers’ preferences for crops obtained using novel production systems, and then adopts a theory of change scenario approach and participatory research to assess the impact of these production systems on the economy of a Scottish rural territory.
  • UKRI JUSTLANZ “Just transformation of food-farming systems: reconciling net zero and other land-use ambitions” (2024-2027). This project aims to develop transformative pathways for a just transition to net zero for the UK farming food sector considering local, regional and national priorities, working with farmers and their communities. Our SEGS team is responsible of conducting the research in the Lough Erne case study, Northern Ireland, and assessing trade-offs between net-zero and other goals such as food security and biodiversity preservation as well as farmers’ adaptive capacity.

Past research

In past years at the James Hutton Institute, I have been working on various national and international projects funded, among others, by the European Commission and the Scottish Government.

  • Horizon 2020 RELOCAL “Resituating the local in cohesion and territorial development” (2017-2021), coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland. In the framework of Work Package 8 “Coherence and Scenarios”, we examine the logic underpinning different types of interventions targeting spatial justice in 33 EU case study localities, including the Isle of Lewis (Scotland), and develop plausible scenarios for 2030. Types of spatial injustice considered include territorial disadvantage, neighbourhood segregation, and place disempowerment.
  • ESPON ESCAPE “European Shrinking Rural Areas Challenges, Actions and Perspectives for Territorial Governance” (2019-2020), coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland. We analyse the phenomenon of population shrinking in EU rural areas by means of eight in-depth case studies and quantitative analysis of past and future trends in demographic and socio-economic variables.
  • AHDB “Grower platform to support resilient rotations” (2016-2021). We assess the impact of different rotation schemes on the economics of crops, primarily potatoes, by means of a panel dataset complied by growers all over Britain.
  • MDT project INTR-EXP-MET “Introducing experimental methods for the study of resource and land-related decisions in rural Scotland” (2021-2022). We aim at introducing economic experiments to Hutton employees and PhD students by making them play a real, incentivised behavioural game and illustrating the potential of such methods in a workshop. In parallel, we will establish a mobile experimental economic laboratory for future experimental research in Scottish rural areas.
  • RESAS RD 3.2.4 “Food culture and dietary choices” (2016-2021). We develop an agent-based model of consumer food behaviours to assess the potential impact of eating networks in workplace canteens on the healthiness and sustainability of individual diets.
  • RESAS RD 3.4.1 “Demographic change in remote areas” (2016-2021). We develop a novel economic-demographic model to assess the impact of different economic scenarios of population change in Scottish sparsely populated areas, and draw policy implications.
  • RESAS RD 1.4.3b “Realising multiple benefits and managing trade-offs” (2016-2021). We assess the potential for ecological focus areas and agri-environment climate schemes to deliver multiple benefits (economic, social, and ecological) at a landscape scale, with a focus on payment-by-result options and incentives to promote coordination and cooperation between farmers.

Publications

Journals

Prior to appointment

Books / chapters

Technical / contract reports

Conference papers

Conference posters / abstracts

  • Barlagne, C.; Piras, S.; Clement, J.; Thabet, C.; Souissi, I.; Mokhtari, N.; Tura, M. (2023) Integrating experimental economics and biometric methods to improve understanding of consumers’ decision making A novel protocol and its application to the case of olive oil in Tunisia and Morocco, XVII EAAE Congress “Agri-food systems in a changing world: Connecting science and society”, 29 August – 1 September 2023, Rennes, France
  • Piras, S.; Mulazzani, L.; Barlagne, C.; Nchimbi Msolla, S.; Mwanri, A.; Ddungu, R.; Ogenrwoth, B.; Hanafi, A.; Chimoita, E.; Kapour, G.; Setti, M. (2023) Smallholders’ food security between farming and migration Evidence from five Northern and Eastern African countries, XVII EAAE Congress “Agri-food systems in a changing world: Connecting science and society”, 29 August – 1 September 2023, Rennes, France
  • Ghinoi, S.; Piras, S.; Tasciotti, L.; Wesz Junior, V.J. (2023) The economic and ecological impact of soy expansion in Brazil A Synthetic Control Method approach, XVII EAAE Congress “Agri-food systems in a changing world: Connecting science and society”, 29 August – 1 September 2023, Rennes, France
  • Hopkins, J.; Piras, S.; Kapour, G. (2022) How could a net zero economy impact rural demography? Insights from a regional model for Scotland, Presentation to session ‘Online-G03-O2 Demographic Change, Population, Migration and Mobility Behaviour’, European Regional Studies Association Congress, 22 August 2022, Pécs, Hungary.
  • Barlagne, C.; Gallina Toschi, T.; Piras, S.; Suurmets, S.; Clement, J.; Tura, M.; Lazzarini, C.; Mokhtari, N.; Ait Elkassia, A.; Thabet, C.; Souissi, A.; Bendini, A. (2022) Protocol for a joint auctioneye tracking measurement of consumers preferences for extra virgin oil in Tunisia and Morocco, EUROSENSE 2022: A Sense of Earth. 10th European Conference on Sensory and Consumer Research, 13-16 September 2022, Turku, Finland
  • Giordano, C.; Graziano, P.; Lazzarini, M.; Piras, S.; Spaghi, S. (2021) Alternative Food Networks and Household Food Waste Evidence from an Italian Case Study, Giordano, C.; Graziano, P.; Lazzarini, M.; Piras, S.; Spaghi, S. (2021). Alternative Food Networks and Household Food Waste: Evidence from an Italian Case Study, RETASTE Conference abstracts, Vol. 1, p.36.
  • Giordano, C.; Graziano, P.; Lazzarini, M.; Piras, S.; Spaghi, S. (2021) Alternative Food Networks and Household Food Waste Evidence from an Italian Case Study, Giordano, C.; Graziano, P.; Lazzarini, M.; Piras, S.; Spaghi, S. (2021). Alternative Food Networks and Household Food Waste: Evidence from an Italian Case Study, RETASTE Conference abstracts, Vol. 1, p.36.
  • Piras, S.; Banchelli, F.; Giordano, C.; Righi, S.; Setti, M. (2021) Children’s Food Waste Behaviour Between Concept-Based Education, Peers, and Family Influence Insights from Primary School Canteens in Northern Italy, Piras, S.; Banchelli, F.; Giordano, C.; Righi, S.; Setti, M. (2021). Children’s Food Waste Behaviour Between Concept-Based Education, Peers, and Family Influence. Insights from Primary School Canteens in Northern Italy, RETASTE Conference Abstracts, p.165.
  • Piras, S.; Banchelli, F.; Giordano, C.; Righi, S.; Setti, M. (2021) Children’s Food Waste Behaviour Between Concept-Based Education, Peers, and Family Influence Insights from Primary School Canteens in Northern Italy, Piras, S.; Banchelli, F.; Giordano, C.; Righi, S.; Setti, M. (2021). Children’s Food Waste Behaviour Between Concept-Based Education, Peers, and Family Influence. Insights from Primary School Canteens in Northern Italy, RETASTE Conference Abstracts, p.165.