Taking the city cluster of the Xiangjiang River basin for example, the paper proposed a new approach to associate the regional ecological footprint with the socio-economic development. First, on the basis of the traditional emergetic ecological footprint model, the changing processes of the local ecological footprint in the six cities of the Xiangjiang River basin were calculated and analyzed by dividing the ecological footprint accounts into the local productive resources accounts and the local waste emission accounts. Then, the correlation degree between the ecological footprint and the socio-economic indicators was calculated with the method of mathematical statistics. The results showed that the average ecological footprint was 18.35 times of the average ecological carrying capacity from 1999 to 2008, which demonstrated that the city cluster of the Xiangjiang River basin was in a situation of ecological deficit. The largest ecological deficit occurred in Yueyang City while the smallest occurred in Changsha City among this city cluster. The plus-driving effects of the socio-economic development to the ecological footprint was much stronger than the minus-driving effect. Economic development model and food demand were the principal factors which prompted the growth of the local ecological footprint. Therefore, it should be paid full attention to the driving effect of the economic model to the ecological environment in the process of the economic structure transition.