Aim: The present study aims to understand environmental problems perception related to affectivity. Introduction and Context: The seriousness of global environmental problems engenders a challenge to psychology regarding the need to induce environmentally responsible behavior and sustainable development. Environmental psychology research has classically been cognitively oriented. Recent studies on risk perception, however, highlight the important role that affect may be playing, and sustainable behavior seems to stem from emotions (feelings of connectedness with other beings or moral emotions such as indignation or guilt).Method: 170 undergraduates where asked to recall associations for three environmental problems selected from a previous survey: climate change, loss of biodiversity, and environmental unconsciousness. Affective images associated with these issues were collected through free association test. Affect was also measured using the validated Spanish version of The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). One assumption of the current research is that word association techniques may allow to explore possible links between imagery and behavior. Despite the fact that this measuring instrument has recently been applied to the analysis of environmental risks, our methodological contribution is its combination with one of the most widely used measure of affectivity. That is to say, the second assumption rests on evidence suggesting a two dimensional structure of affective experience. 1509 associations were generated through the imagery survey and the content of these associations was analysed for each inductive stimulus.Affective imagery: The primary image of the majority of respondents was a paraphrase of each environmental issue. Although very few associations to climate change denoted consequences on human health, and no one mentioned future generations, our findings indicate a strong tendency for respondents to specify effects such as disasters, ice melting or floods, rather than causes, such as greenhouse gas emissions. By the same token, loss of biodiversity was primarily associated with resource scarcity or devastation, not with excessive uses of ecosystems. A slight difference appeared in images associated with environmental unconsciousness: the second highest frequency of responses referred to a specific behavioral pattern (no recycling actions), and the following ones suggested a sense of personal responsibility for environmental outcomes. In addition to analyzing the content categories, the affective ratings of images were examined.Implications: The knowledge gained from this research may be applied to the construction of communication messages and although more research is needed to compare data from different socio-demographic groups, there is some evidence that affective dimensions may be predictive of participation in pro-environmental behaviors.