Environmental and social attitudes and investments in crypto-assets
Pavel Ciaian, Andrej Cupák, Pirmin Fessler, d’Artis Kancs
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to contribute to our understanding of the relationship of environmental and social attitudes of investors and their investment into crypto-assets compared to traditional assets.Given the controversies over the environmental footprint of some crypto-asset classes, primarily due to energy-intensive mining, they present an intriguing subject for investigation.Leveraging a unique household finance survey representative of the Austrian population, we examine whether environmental and social attitudes can elucidate the variance in individual portfolio exposure to crypto-assets.Results indicate a robust link between investors' environmental and social attitudes and their exposure to crypto-investments, yet no significant association was found with traditional asset benchmarks like bonds and shares.