Human and digital human narrators in intangible cultural heritage short videos: dual psychological evaluation pathways through customer inspiration to electronic word-of-mouth intention

Introduction Explainer-style short-form videos have become an important medium for the digital communication of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), with narrators serving as key sources connecting ICH content to viewers’ psychological responses. However, how human and digital human narrators are associated with electronic word-of-mouth intention (eWOMI) through viewers’ perceptual, evaluative, and motivational processes remains insufficiently understood. Using explainer-style short-form videos about Hakka tulou as the research context, this study compared human and digital human narrators and examined two psychological evaluation pathways to customer inspiration (CI): one linking narrator nonverbal immediacy (NNI) to CI via narrator credibility (NC), and the other linking perceived narrator clarity (PNC) to CI through perceived information quality (PIQ). The study also investigated the relationship between CI and eWOMI. Methods A randomized one-factor, two-level between-subjects experiment was conducted with a convenience sample of 601 participants. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), bootstrapping, moderation analysis, and multigroup analysis. Results Results indicated that both NNI and PNC were higher in the human narrator condition than in the digital human narrator condition. The relationships between NNI and NC and between NC and CI were stronger in the human narrator condition, whereas the relationships between PNC and PIQ and between PIQ and CI did not differ significantly between conditions. Focused attention positively moderated the relationships of NC and PIQ with CI. NNI and PNC were associated with CI through NC and PIQ, respectively, and CI was positively associated with eWOMI. Discussion The findings suggest that the advantage of human narrators is concentrated in the source-evaluation pathway rather than the information-evaluation pathway, highlighting the roles of narrator-related perceptual cues and focused attention in shaping customer inspiration and dissemination intention in ICH short-form videos.