The way through which people conceive images of their living conditions is examined in this paper in order to develop an evaluation method of the environment. Ordinary residents seem to recognize their living condition in its entirely. Therefore, the usual survey questionnaire, where a respondent finds questions on individual items, would not give satisfactory information of his/her cognitive structure of the environment. To find the inseparable cognitive structure as a whole, the authors employ the association method. In the authors' questionnaire, a free association test asking subjects what they associate with a concept "ease of living" is followed by a controlled association test which deals with some 30 stimulus words and possibly associated words. These words were chosen to cover almost all environmental aspects including amenities, human relations in the neighborhood, culture, and administrative services. Surveys were conducted in a district in downtown Tokyo and in a small city near the metropolis. Researchers of environmental studies and pollution control also responded to the survey. Data of the frequency of association between the words in the controlled association test was scrutinized through cluster analysis, and on the other hand the words involved were displayed into a directed graph due to the probability of association between them. By integrating these results into a diagram, the cognitive structures of environment are uncovered. Replies to the free association test are dealt with a two-way cluster analysis method to reveal the relation between groups of the associated words and groups of the subjects. This analysis makes it easy to know what aspect of the environment is of prime interest to a particular group of residents. © 1986.