Centre for Rural Economy

Staff Profile

Dr Diogo Monjardino De Souza Monteiro

Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness

Background

I am a food business economist and my research interests are in the economics of information, consumer behaviour and supply chain coordination in the food industry. Specifically, my research is founded in contract and information theory as well behaviour economics to understand agro-food firms and consumers behaviour. I then test theoretical frameworks using survey and experimental economic methods. Examples of my work are the investigation consumer acceptance and willingness to pay for the information on nutrition, origin and sustainable attributes of food. I also use such methods to understand how farmers and other agents in the supply coordinate trade using contracts or other forms of vertical coordination to supply quality attributes of food. I led multi-disciplinary and international teams investigating detection of emergent diseases, sustainable diets and, more recently, urban farming.

Selected publications:

  1. Souza Monteiro, D. M., Brockbank, C., and Heron, G. (2020) Drivers of Food Waste in Universities Event Catering. Journal of Food Products Marketing DOI; https://doi.org/10.1080/10454446.2020.1765935
  2. De Grave, R., Rust, N., Watson, A. Reynolds, C. Smiddink, J. and Souza Monteiro, D. M. (2019) Can we monitor transitions to sustainable diets in the UK with current datasets? Global Food Security, Vol. 24: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.100344.
  3. Bonroy, O., Garapin, A., Hamilton, S. F. and Souza Monteiro, D. M. (2019) Free-riding on product quality in cooperatives: Lessons from an experiment. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aay025 (Awarded the EAAE Quality of Research Discovery Award for 2019)
  1. Souza-Monteiro, D. M., Hooker N H. (2017) “Comparing UK Food Retailers’ Corporate Responsibility Strategies.” British Food Journal, 119(3): 658 – 675. DOI: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/BFJ-04-2016-015
  1. Balcombe, K., Fraser, I. M Lowe, B. T. and Souza Monteiro, D.M. (2016) “Information Customization and Food Choice.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 98 (1): 54-73. DOI: 10.1093/ajae/aav033


Area of Expertise

Food Business economics, food marketing, Consumer research, Food Policy, applied econometrics

Education

PhD, Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, USA

MSc in Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, USA

MSc in Agro-food Marketing, Agronomic Mediterranean Institute of Saragossa, International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (IAMZ-CIHEAM), Spain

BSc in Animal Science, University of Évora, Portugal

Affiliations

Behavioural Economics Northeast Centre (BENC)

Centro de Estudos Transdisciplinares para o Desenvolvimento (CETRAD), Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) Portugal. Since 2010.

Leadership roles

Supply Chain Resilience Champion for the Science and Technologies Facilities Council Food Network (STFC Food)

Newcastle Supply Chain Chair for the N8 Agri-food program.

Past roles

Founder and Degree Program Director for the Food Business Marketing and Management program Bachelor’s degree at School of Natural and Environmental Sciences Newcastle University (2017-2019)

Chair of Mentoring Committee, Agricultural and Applied Economists Association, USA (since 2017-2019)

Degree Program Director for the Agri-Business Management Bachelor’s degree at School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University (2014-2017)

Academic Service

Editorial board member for the Journal of Food Products Marketing, Agriculture and Resource Economics Review and Economia Agro-alimentare.

Managing Editor of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review (2013-2017)

Co-edited the Special Issue Changing Food Consumption Behaviours published at Psychology and Marketing (vol 28, issue 3).

Professional Experience

2017 - School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, UK: Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Management 

2014 - 2017 School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, UK: Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Management

2006 - 2014 Kent Business School, University of Kent, UK: Lecturer in Food Economics and Marketing

2006 - 2010 Honorary Lecturer in Food Economics and Marketing at the Imperial College London, Wye Campus, UK:

2000 - 2002 Escola Superior Agrária de Santarém (Agricultural College of Santarém), Department of Economics, Portugal:

1998 Novadelta - Delta Cafés: Assistant Marketing Manager:

1994 - 1998 Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture, General Division for Rural Development

Research

My main research interest and expertise is in supply chain coordination and how consumers use information to make their decisions. Specifically previous my projects focused on the economics of traceability in food chains, consumer use of digital technologies to access nutrition information, economics of detection of emergent animal diseases and food waste mitigation in the food service. I use survey and experimental on my empirical research.

My research program is in applied food economics and marketing. Currently I am focusing on three main lines of inquiry: 1) How may digital technologies and labels affect consumers healthier or sustainable food choices? 2) How to coordinate the supply of credence quality attributes of food along the value chain? How to sustain reputation and trust  in food quality attributes? 3) When can we rely private-public partnerships to deliver food policy goals?

My Google Scholar page can be consulted here and my ORCID profile in here

Expertise

Economics of food quality and information, Food Marketing, Supply chain coordination, Consumer research on nutrition and diet choices, Food Policy, choice experiments, applied econometrics.

Current projects

1.  Building Smart urban Farming data systems: A Case study in Yogyakarta.(Co-Investigator, Newcastle University Lead). Funded by the STFC Food Network (SFN) 

2. Understanding Pathways to Sustainable diets, Principal Investigator Funded by N8 Newcastle University Pump priming project.


Past projects

1.   Fraud in Green markets – In this international collaboration with Professors Steve Hamilton from the California Polytechnic Institute, Alexis Gapapin from the University Grenoble Alpes and Dr Olivier Bonroy a senior researcher at INRA -Grenoble Applied Economics Lab, we developed an economic experiment to investigate the effect of market size and alternative monitoring and enforcement rules on the mitigation of fraud in labels with collective reputation (such as organic). This research has been sponsored by INRA and the University Grenoble Alpes.

2. Consumer and Supply Chain Opportunities and Challenges for British Pulses Based Processed Foods. Newcastle University Consultancy project KH162931, funded by IAGRI, Ltd. – GBP 2,000.00 (Principal Investigator)


Teaching

  Undergraduate Teaching

ACE3201 Marketing and public policy

The module is a research-led module drawing upon the work of researchers in the Centre for Rural Economy in the School of Natural and Environmental Scientists, where much research is food industry based. After an introduction to public policy and social marketing this module focus on policy solutions to contemporary societal issues such as food security, food waste or sustainable transport. We discuss how different policy instruments and the social marketing framework can be used to address policy issues.

ACE3079 Economics of Food and Industry Analysis  Module Leader (10 Credits)

The goal of this module is to provide students with contemporary knowledge on how markets operate and offer them rationales to make adequate marketing strategy decisions. In line with developments of food markets in the past 30 years, the module will focus on differentiated food markets and will build on industrial economics models of market strategy.

The module has two sections: 1) in the first section of the module the students will learn theoretic frameworks to understand firm marketing decisions; 2) in the second section the students will have learn by doing preparing a food industry analysis report, where they will be expected to describe the competitive environment the consumer demand trends and the regulatory environment of a food industry of their choice.

Postgraduate Teaching

ACE8109 Agri-Food Economics and Marketing  Module Leader (10 Credits)

This module introduced students to the basic principles of economics informing consumer, business and markets. The course schedule has two main sections. In the first section students will be introduced to the principles of economics analysis, focusing on consumer demand, supply and markets. Also in this section will have a brief introduction to non-competitive markets, which is the basis for the marketing model. Then in the second part of the course will cover applications of the principles to food marketing decisions. Specifically this section covers the following topics: private and public standards (organic and GAPs), brands and labels, food quality marketing,



Publications