With the rapid development of economy, it has an increasingly serious impact on the environment,which makes the resource environmental carrying capacity become a hot topic concerned by the public.This paper has conducted comprehensive studies from four aspects, namely, the theory of carryingcapacity, the theory of resource carrying capacity, the theory of environmental carrying capacity and thetheory of resource environmental carrying capacity. As can be seen, with the constant extension andexpansion of the connotation of the carrying capacity, it has developed from the ecology to the researchfields such as environmental science and economics, etc. The current studies on the resource carryingcapacity include the land resources carrying capacity, water resources carrying capacity,... mineralresources capacity and forest resources capacity. The previous studies have only considered therelationship between human development and resources from one side, while the future researchdirections perhaps can focus on a systematic perspective to define the comprehensive resource carryingcapacity. The studies on the environmental carrying capacity include the atmosphere environmentalcarrying capacity, tourism environmental carrying capacity and ecology environmental carrying capacity,etc. Scholars have conducted a relatively mature study of the environmental carrying capacity theory andcalculation method, as they take the quality into account, consider the restraint of quantity as well asincorporate the socioeconomic factors into the studies of the carrying system.