Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/264835 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 243
Publisher: 
Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), Vienna
Abstract: 
Individuals invest in Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG)-assets not only because of (higher) expected returns but also driven by ethical and social considerations. Less is known about ESG-conscious investor subjective beliefs about crypto-assets and how these compare to traditional assets. Controversies surrounding the ESG footprint of certain crypto-asset classes – mainly on grounds of their energy-intensive crypto mining – offer a potentially informative object of inquiry. Leveraging a unique representative household finance survey for the Austrian population, we examine whether investors' ESG preferences can explain cross-sectional differences in individual portfolio exposure to crypto-assets. We find a strong association between investors' ESG preferences and the crypto-investment exposure but no significant relationship for the benchmarks of traditional asset classes such as bonds and shares.
Subjects: 
crypto-assets
investment portfolio
financial behaviour
financial literacy
environmental-social-governance preferences
JEL: 
D14
G11
G41
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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