  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 do 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. The ESG-conscious investor
attention is higher for crypto-assets compared to traditional asset classes
such as bonds and shares.
