How-to videos on YouTube: the role of the instructor

How-to videos on YouTube have become a popular source for procedural learning. An important difference to traditional educational videos is that the instructor is often not a professional educator, but an amateur or peer. Building on work on social learning from models, this paper explores how instructor characteristics such as model-observer similarity, instructor credibility (expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness), and conversational human voice influence choice and evaluation of a how-to video. A survey (n = 401) among active Internet users was conducted. Most respondents had used YouTube and had watched how-to videos on YouTube. Respondents preferred videos with instructors that they perceived as experts and trustworthy, and who talked in a conversational human voice. Instructors of the same gender as the viewer were also preferred, especially by males. The instructor variables explained variance in perceived usefulness and intention to use how-to videos above and beyond the technical and instructional quality of the video. However, only conversational human voice and same gender of the instructor turned out to be significant predictors of perceived usefulness and intention to use.