Due to emerging environmental problems from fossil fuel usage and increasing renewable energy resources in microgrids, the need of demand response (DR) is intensified to stabilize irregular balance and to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions simultaneously. However, in order to estimate practical and factual DR potential, an analysis of load characteristics including user behavior is required based on information data. Thus, in this study, a novel analytic approach is proposed to detect resident behavior for environment responsive DR potential estimation. A new framework to determine optimal DR potential is proposed with related data analysis models. In each analysis model, resident occupancy behavior and forecasted renewable energy generation are estimated. During the process of resident behavior detection, sub-metering data of appliances are analyzed and profiled for multiple purposes by a new method based on hidden Markov model and time varying Markov chain. The optimal DR potential is estimated considering guaranteed residents’ comfort constraints and the dynamic characteristics of appliances. The proposed framework is tested on the single household environment of residential region and the results present that the proposed model is environmentally and economically effective, while also suggesting meaningful implications through resident behavior data analysis.