The fluorescent components of chromophoric dissolved matter ( CDOM) in water samples collected from Xiamen Bay in spring and autumn, 2009 were examined using excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy combined with parallel factor analysis (EEMs-PARAFAC). PARAFAC decomposed the fluorescence matrices of CDOM into three humic-like (C1: 250, 345/454 nm; C2: 230, 310/374 nm; C5: 265, 424/478 nm) and two protein-like (C3: 230/342 nm; C4: 230, 275/322 nm) components. Good linear correlation occurred among three humic-like components and between two protein-like components, respectively. This demonstrated that the same types of components (humic-like or protein-like) have similar origin and geochemical behaviors. High abundances of humic-like components were found at the upstream zone of the Jiulong Estuary, while the high abundance of protein-like components occurred at the northern part of semi-enclosed Western Xiamen Harbor. The significant negative correlations were found between the abundances of all fluorescence components and salinity in the estuary area. However, the high contents of chlorophyll a were in line with the high abundances of C3 and C4 in non-estuarine area, which implies that phytoplankton activity could be another important source of protein-like components besides the river runoff. A principal component analysis(PCA) of fluorescent components revealed that terrestrial runoff was the dominant sources of CDOM fluorescence components in Xiamen Bay, while the contribution of the in situ biological processes was relatively lower. This study demonstrates that the combination use of PARAFAC modeling and chemometrics (i.e. PCA) is very useful in identifying the origin of CDOM and quantifying the primary factors influencing their distributions.