The researchers studied how sustainable development in Zhejiang Province affects the environment using a local ecological footprint model. They found the following: on average, each person in the province uses 2.7638 hectares of land but only 0.4379 hectares can be sustained naturally. This creates an ecological deficit of 2.325861 hectares per person. Between 1991 and 2006, the province consumed more resources than the environment could support, showing unsustainable development. Different cities in Zhejiang had varying ecological footprints in 2005. The intensity of ecological footprint per area increased significantly over the past 16 years, indicating a higher risk to the environment in the future.