Evaluating Smoke-Free Area Policy in Solok City, Indonesia: Implementation Gaps, Policy Performance, and Sustainable Urban Governance

2.1 Public policy analysis

Public policy analysis provides the most appropriate entry point for examining smoke-free area regulation, because the issue is not simply whether a rule exists, but whether public institutions can translate a legal mandate into meaningful social outcomes [18]. In the field of policy studies, public policy is generally understood as a purposive course of action taken by government to address public problems [42, 65]. This understanding is essential in the context of smoke-free policy because tobacco exposure in public spaces constitutes a collective problem rather than a private matter. Once smoking behavior affects shared air quality, workplace safety, the health of schoolchildren, and access to healthy public services, the issue becomes a matter of public authority, public responsibility, and public value. In this sense, smoke-free regulation is best understood as a policy instrument intended to address negative externalities, protect vulnerable groups, and align local governance with broader public health goals [14]. The research also places the Solok case within this public-policy tradition by framing the study as an evaluation of a local government regulation whose effectiveness depends on how policy objectives are translated into implementation and results.

A policy-analysis perspective is particularly relevant because it emphasizes that public policy should be assessed across multiple stages, from agenda setting and formulation to implementation and evaluation [66, 67]. This staged view matters for the Solok case because the evidence does not suggest a failure at the level of agenda recognition or legal formulation. On the contrary, the city has already recognized tobacco smoke as a public health issue and formalized its response through Regional Regulation No. 1 of 2020 and subsequent implementing guidance. The more serious problem arises after adoption, namely in translating the regulation into everyday institutional practice and public compliance. This distinction is analytically important because it prevents the study from collapsing all policy problems into one category. The policy exists, the target areas are defined, and the public health rationale is clear; what remains problematic is the consistency, intensity, and effectiveness of implementation. From this standpoint, policy analysis is not merely descriptive. It is explanatory and diagnostic. It seeks to identify where in the policy chain the problem actually lies and why a formally valid intervention fails to generate the intended public outcome. This is especially important in local tobacco control, because legal enactment often creates an impression of governmental progress even when compliance remains weak. The WHO continues to emphasize that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke and that comprehensive smoke-free environments are the only proven way to protect non-smokers from tobacco smoke exposure fully. That means the analytic standard should not be the mere presence of local regulation, but the degree to which the regulation produces genuinely smoke-free public environments.

2.2 Policy implementation

Within policy analysis, implementation theory is central because implementation is the stage at which political commitments are tested against institutional reality [68, 69]. The Solok case strongly supports this focus. The research identifies that implementation of the smoke-free area regulation has not been optimal, that routine coordination and evaluation programs have not been institutionalized, and that members of the public continue to smoke in designated smoke-free areas. These findings indicate that the key question is not whether the policy is desirable in principle, but whether the local government has built an implementation system capable of supporting compliance and protecting public spaces in practice.

Grindle and Thomas [43] distinguished between the content of policy and its implementation context, arguing that policy outcomes depend not only on what the policy says but also on the environment in which it is implemented. This distinction is highly useful for analyzing smoke-free governance in Solok. In terms of policy content, the local regulation appears substantively appropriate: it identifies the public problem, designates the protected spaces, and clarifies the normative objective of reducing exposure to tobacco smoke. However, the implementation context appears much weaker. The research points to delayed socialization, limited routine coordination, inadequate operational support, insufficient public understanding, and persistent non-compliance. This suggests that the policy’s substantive content has not been matched by a sufficiently supportive administrative and social environment.

The framework is particularly valuable because it prevents the analysis from blaming only one actor. Policy failure in smoke-free governance cannot be reduced simply to the behavior of smokers. Instead, it must be located in the interaction between institutional design, organizational preparedness, resources, communication, enforcement, and public response. The Solok research precisely shows this interaction. The regulation itself exists, but its supporting routines remain weak. Officials report that coordination and evaluation are not conducted as a formal routine, and operational limitations have constrained special outreach on smoking risks. In implementation terms, this means that the policy is formally present but institutionally thin. Its content may be clear, but the context needed to sustain it remains underdeveloped. This insight is consistent with broader tobacco-control governance. WHO’s tobacco-control framework shows that smoke-free policy is effective when governments do more than legislate; they must also protect people through sustained enforcement, communication, and institutional commitment. The Indonesian GATS 2021 results reinforce this point by showing that passive smoke exposure remains high in restaurants and workplaces, indicating that the challenge lies not only in individual smoking prevalence but also in weak protection in ordinary shared environments. These national data strengthen the theoretical argument that implementation is the decisive arena in tobacco-control policy.

The Solok case can be sharpened further from an implementation perspective, especially by assessing policy implementation in terms of the appropriateness of the policy, the implementers, the target, the environment, and the process. This approach is useful because it allows the analysis to move beyond general claims of ineffectiveness and instead identify where policy misalignment occurs. In the Solok case, the target of the regulation appears appropriate. Schools, health facilities, workplaces, public transportation, and enclosed public places are precisely the types of spaces that should be protected from second-hand smoke. The policy object is therefore not conceptually misplaced. However, the research suggests that problems emerge in the other dimensions. The implementing actors are formally present, but their interaction has not yet become routine and fully coordinated. The target group, namely the broader public, is still not adequately informed and does not consistently internalize the rule. The implementation environment remains permissive because smoking is still socially common and often normalized. Finally, the process remains weak because communication is not continuous, and evaluative routines are not firmly established. The research explicitly notes that public communication must be clear, understandable, and continuous so that the target group can correctly apply the policy. This point is particularly important because implementation failure often occurs not when rules are absent, but when the communication and reinforcement process is too weak to produce behavioral adaptation [70, 71]. The framework is therefore helpful for explaining why Solok’s smoke-free policy has not yet achieved full effectiveness. The weakness lies not primarily in policy intention but in process alignment. A city can have the right regulations and target areas, yet still fail if implementers are not fully aligned, if the environment remains tolerant of violations, and if communication and monitoring are intermittent rather than continuous.

2.3 Policy evaluation

If implementation theory explains how policy is delivered, policy evaluation explains how policy performance should be judged [72, 73]. The research notes that policy evaluation has two major tasks: first, to determine the consequences of a policy by describing its impacts, and second, to assess the success or failure of that policy against predefined standards or performance criteria. This formulation is highly relevant to smoke-free governance because it prevents evaluation from stopping at procedural questions alone. A regulation cannot be considered effective simply because it has been enacted or because some socialization activities have taken place. It must be evaluated by asking whether it has actually reduced smoking in prohibited areas, improved compliance, increased public awareness, and protected citizens from second-hand smoke exposure.

The research also refers to evaluation as a process of gathering valid information to understand whether intended goals are being achieved. This aligns well with public-policy evaluation more broadly, where the purpose of evaluation is not only to judge performance retrospectively but also to generate learning for future policy improvement [65, 74, 75]. In the Solok case, this learning dimension is especially important because the research identifies an absence of routine coordination and evaluation. Without evaluation, local government cannot know whether its communication strategy is adequate, whether enforcement is credible, whether facilities are properly marked, whether target groups understand the regulation, or whether different agencies are performing their roles consistently [76-79]. In this sense, the absence of routine evaluation is not merely an administrative omission; it is a structural barrier to policy learning. The evaluative lens also helps clarify why the Solok case matters academically. The question is not only whether the policy exists, but whether it produces socially meaningful consequences. The research indicates that smoking remains present in smoke-free zones, that knowledge of the regulation is uneven, and that public and institutional acceptance is still incomplete. These observations imply that the intended policy consequences have not yet been fully realized. Thus, from this perspective, the policy remains only partially successful. It has established a normative framework, but it has not yet produced a stable regime of compliance and public protection.

2.4 Sustainable development

Although smoke-free regulation is often discussed as a public health measure, its significance extends much further when viewed through the lens of sustainable development [9, 80]. This broader perspective is essential because sustainable development is concerned not only with economic growth but also with protecting human well-being, environmental quality, and inclusive access to safe living conditions [81-83]. The United Nations identifies SDG 3 as the goal of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. At the same time, Target 3 specifically calls for strengthening the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. At the same time, SDG 11 aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. It includes Target 11.6, which aims to reduce the adverse environmental impact of cities, especially through attention to air quality, and Target 11.7, which aims to ensure access to safe, inclusive, and accessible public spaces. Smoke-free governance lies squarely within this intersection. This linkage is not merely rhetorical. Second-hand smoke directly affects air quality in enclosed and shared spaces, and it undermines the safety and inclusiveness of public institutions. When smoking persists in schools, health facilities, public transport, and workplaces, the city fails to guarantee equitable access to safe environments. Such failure has particular implications for vulnerable groups, including children, patients, the elderly, service workers, and non-smokers who have not chosen to bear exposure. WHO’s position that there is no safe level of second-hand smoke exposure strengthens the argument that smoke-free governance is part of a city’s basic responsibility to provide health-protective public environments. In that sense, ineffective smoke-free policy undermines not only public health goals but also the broader sustainability of urban governance [59, 84].

This research supports this sustainability interpretation indirectly but clearly. It notes that the problem of smoking in smoke-free areas is especially serious because many passive smokers, including children, are affected. This point is important because sustainable development requires that public policy protect those with the least capacity to avoid harm [85]. Smoke-free governance is therefore also a matter of distributive justice: it shifts the burden of protection away from vulnerable individuals and toward public institutions [84]. A city that allows tobacco smoke to remain present in spaces intended for education, care, worship, administration, and mobility is not only weak in enforcement; it is weak in protecting the social foundations of sustainable urban life [86].

Taken together, these perspectives support an integrated framework for the research. First, policy analysis provides the broad lens for understanding smoke-free areas as a public problem requiring state intervention [84]. Second, implementation theory allows the study to identify where and why the policy chain breaks down between regulation and results [87]. Third, policy evaluation provides the criteria for judging whether the policy has generated the consequences it was intended to produce [38]. Fourth, sustainable development provides the normative horizon that links smoke-free policy to healthy cities, cleaner public environments, and the protection of vulnerable groups [88]. Using this integrated framework, the Solok case can be interpreted as a case of incomplete institutionalization. The city has adopted the formal policy, identified the relevant target areas, and established a legal basis for tobacco control. However, the policy remains constrained by weak routinization, limited interagency coordination, delayed socialization, insufficient evaluative learning, and persistent non-compliance. This makes the case theoretically valuable because it demonstrates that local public health policy effectiveness depends not only on legal design, but on the maturity of governance arrangements that sustain implementation over time. In other words, the article’s theoretical position is that smoke-free policies should be evaluated not as static rules but as governance processes. Its success depends on whether institutions can align policy goals, implementing actors, target groups, communication strategies, enforcement mechanisms, and evaluative feedback. This position is especially important for decentralized contexts such as Indonesia, where national tobacco-control commitments are ultimately realized or undermined by local governments. The Solok case, therefore, offers a compelling opportunity to show how policy analysis, policy evaluation, and sustainable development can be brought together to explain why local smoke-free policy remains only partially effective despite a formally adequate legal foundation.

The reference base of this study is deliberately narrowed to sources that directly address smoke-free area policies, second-hand smoke exposure, local tobacco-control implementation, compliance, enforcement, and decentralized governance in Indonesia. Rather than treating smoke-free policy as a broad sustainability issue, this study positions it as a specific local public-health governance problem: how a formally adopted smoke-free regulation becomes implemented, monitored, enforced, and internalized at the municipal level. This focus is particularly important in Indonesia, where smoke-free regulations are widely adopted across districts and cities but enforcement and compliance remain uneven.

2.5 Smoke-free area policy in decentralized Indonesia

Smoke-free area policy is primarily justified by the need to protect non-smokers from involuntary exposure to second-hand smoke. In Indonesia, this issue remains urgent because tobacco use is not confined to private behavior but extends into shared public and institutional spaces. The GATS Indonesia 2021 reported that 34.5% of Indonesian adults used tobacco products, while second-hand smoke exposure remained high in restaurants and workplaces. These data demonstrate that smoke-free policy should be assessed not merely as a legal instrument but as a mechanism for protecting public environments from normalized tobacco exposure.

Indonesia’s decentralized governance structure makes local governments decisive actors in tobacco-control implementation. National regulations may establish the broad mandate for smoke-free areas, but the actual protection of citizens depends on whether districts and cities adopt, operationalize, inspect, enforce, and evaluate smoke-free regulations. This makes the local level the critical site where national tobacco-control objectives either become effective or remain symbolic. For this reason, the Solok case should be located within the broader literature on smoke-free policy implementation in decentralized Indonesia, rather than within general public-policy theory alone.

Recent tobacco-control governance in Indonesia increasingly emphasizes the need to move beyond legal adoption toward measurable implementation. The Smoke-Free Area Dashboard developed by the Ministry of Health and WHO Indonesia reflects this shift by assessing city and district performance through regulation, inspection, enforcement, and compliance. These four components are highly relevant for evaluating Solok because the city already has a formal regulation, but the research findings show weaknesses in inspection routines, enforcement credibility, and compliance in designated smoke-free areas.

Evidence from other Indonesian cities shows that the main challenge of smoke-free policy lies not only in regulation but also in compliance and enforcement. Studies on local smoke-free zones have found that weak signage, limited enforcement, structural barriers, cultural acceptance of smoking, and economic interests can reduce policy effectiveness. These findings are consistent with the Solok case, where smoke-free areas are formally designated but remain weakly protected due to delayed socialization, limited routine coordination, and persistent smoking behavior in prohibited areas.

The research findings indicate that smoke-free policies in Solok have developed unevenly between formal regulations and practical implementation. Legally, the city has had smoke-free regulations since 2020, and implementing regulations from the mayor since 2021. However, institutionally, the policy has remained weak for several years. Field interviews indicate that regular coordination and evaluation have not been established as regular administrative agendas, while outreach activities only became more visible in 2024 and are still conducted only a few times per year. Field observations also found continued smoking practices in several designated smoke-free areas, including public service environments and spaces intended to protect vulnerable groups. These findings suggest that the primary problem in Solok is not the absence of regulations, but delayed and incomplete institutionalization. Therefore, this article reports the main findings from interviews, observations, and document analysis, rather than summarizing existing theses or previous reports. The study's contribution lies in explaining how local policies can exist legally but remain administratively weak, socially contested, and only partially internalized in the everyday governance of public spaces.

The empirical record examined in this study shows that the implementation of Regional Regulation No. 1 of 2020 on smoke-free areas in Solok City has progressed more strongly at the level of formal regulation than at operational effectiveness. This is the most important overall finding. Solok City is not a jurisdiction without a smoke-free policy. The city has already established a formal local legal framework through Solok City Local Regulation No. 1 of 2020, which regulates smoke-free areas in health facilities, educational facilities, children’s play areas, places of worship, public transportation, workplaces, and enclosed public places. The Audit Board of Indonesia regulation database confirms the existence and legal status of the regulation. The research likewise shows that the policy is formally in place and recognized by local institutions. The central empirical problem is that the existence of the regulation has not yet produced a corresponding level of institutional routinization, public compliance, or evaluative learning.

This gap becomes more serious when viewed within the broader public health context. WHO’s 2025 tobacco fact sheet states that tobacco kills more than 7 million people annually, including an estimated 1.6 million non-smokers who die because of exposure to second-hand smoke. WHO also states that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke and that tobacco use remains concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, where about 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live. These figures matter because they establish the public-health significance of local smoke-free governance. A city-level smoke-free regulation should be assessed against a stringent benchmark: whether it actually protects people from involuntary exposure to smoke in the places where they work, study, seek treatment, worship, travel, and socialize. The Solok case, therefore, cannot be treated as a narrow administrative issue. It concerns whether a local government can operationalize a globally recognized public-health imperative in everyday urban governance.

The national Indonesian context further reinforces the urgency of the problem. According to the official WHO–Ministry of Health release of the GATS Indonesia Report 2021, published in August 2024, 34.5% of Indonesian adults, equivalent to 70.2 million people, used tobacco. Tobacco use among adult men reached 65.5%, while among women it was 3.3%. The same official release found that second-hand smoke exposure remained very high in public settings, including 74.2% in restaurants and 44.8% in workplaces. WHO Indonesia’s 2026 official report on protecting communities from second-hand smoke expanded this picture by noting that exposure also remained substantial in government buildings (41.4%), public transportation (40.5%), and even health-care facilities (14.2%). WHO further stated that more than 90% of Indonesia's districts have adopted subnational smoke-free regulations, yet enforcement remains weak. These official figures are highly relevant to the Solok case because they show that Solok’s implementation problems do not stand outside the national pattern; rather, they mirror a broader Indonesian condition in which smoke-free laws are increasingly present, but their field-level enforcement remains uneven.

The research itself clearly identifies this local implementation gap. Its abstract states that implementation of the Solok smoke-free areas regulation has not been optimal, that the policy only became more operational in 2024, and that socialization was carried out through local government agencies under the Health Office. It further states that the policy remains weak across several dimensions: the policy had not yet solved the problem it was intended to solve; implementation only truly moved in 2024; the designated areas were already correct, but the rule was still ignored; and from the process dimension, many citizens did not agree with or internalize the smoke-free policy. On the evaluation side, the research adds that smoke-free areas in Solok still generate a long debate, ranging from claims about smokers' rights in public places to concerns over the economic effects of anti-smoking measures, and that both the public and local government institutions still suffer from limited knowledge and weak dissemination regarding smoke-free areas and restricted smoking zones.

The body of the research provides more concrete field-based evidence for these claims. The background chapter reports that the regulation had already been in force since 2020 and that no-smoking banners and signs had been installed in smoke-free areas, yet observational evidence still found smoking in protected spaces. The research explicitly mentions smoking near a kindergarten by parents waiting for their children, smoking at health facilities despite the presence of warning banners, smoking in public transport, and smoking in government offices. It also reports that activities connected to cigarette sales or promotion were still found in smoke-free spaces, even though the regulation prohibits smoking, selling, advertising, and promoting tobacco products in smoke-free areas. These are important empirical findings because they show that the city’s problem is not simply weak normative commitment. The city has formally identified the protected spaces, but they have not yet been transformed into reliably smoke-free behavioral environments.

A particularly important finding from the research concerns the weakness of routine coordination and evaluation. The research records an interview with a health-sector informant stating that there had been no routine program formally established as an agenda for coordination and evaluation of smoke-free policy in Solok City, that no periodic supervision had been conducted, and that the Health Office could not run dedicated public outreach on the health dangers of smoking except when it could negotiate a few minutes during broader community activities. The same informant noted that there was insufficient operational support for conducting specialized outreach on smoke-free policy. This is a key empirical result because it shows that the policy’s weakness lies not only in public behavior, but also in the incomplete organization of the implementation system itself. In other words, Solok’s smoke-free governance has been under-supported administratively.

Another significant local finding is the timing of implementation activity. The research reports that although the regulation was enacted in 2020, meaningful socialization began only in 2024, and even then, the activity was conducted around three to four times per year. This indicates a major implementation lag between policy adoption and institutional activation. That lag is not merely a chronological curiosity; it suggests that the city’s smoke-free regulation entered the legal system more quickly than it did the administrative routine of local government. Local news outlets independently corroborate the finding. An ANTARA report published on 4 December 2024 stated that the Solok Health Office was actively campaigning for smoke-free areas through a coordination meeting of the smoke-free areas guidance and enforcement team, which involved 25 participants, including subdistrict heads, village heads, and related agencies. That official news report is valuable because it supports the research narrative that active institutional movement around smoke-free areas became more visible only in 2024.

The local social context described in the research also helps explain why implementation has been difficult. The research cites Central Bureau of Statistics data on the weekly number of cigarettes smoked among residents aged five years and above. In the table reproduced in the research, the largest proportion of smokers falls into the 60+ cigarettes per week category, at 73.72%. In comparison, the reported average is 96.25 cigarettes per week. The official Central Bureau of Statistics portal also confirms that local welfare indicators related to smoking are published as part of Solok’s official statistical reporting. Although these figures should be interpreted carefully because they derive from a specific statistical categorization, they still indicate a high-intensity smoking environment. This is an important empirical point: smoke-free areas implementation is not occurring in a city where smoking is marginal. It is taking place in a setting where smoking remains common enough that regulation must confront entrenched behavioral routines, not just incidental violations.

The research also provides evidence of ambivalent public reception. It records an interview with community members who recognized that the regulation had not been fully implemented and expressed hope that it would be enforced seriously, especially in school and health areas, because children and older adults need spaces free from tobacco smoke. At the same time, the research concludes that many citizens did not support the smoke-free policy and that its implementation continues to spark long-standing debates over smokers' rights and the economic implications of anti-smoking policies. This suggests a mixed pattern: normative support for smoke-free protection exists, especially for high-risk spaces, but it coexists with incomplete public internalization and continued tolerance of smoking in practice. The city is therefore dealing with an environment in which a smoke-free policy is visible and partially endorsed, but not yet deeply normalized.

This local pattern should also be read alongside evolving national tobacco control regulations. The Indonesian Ministry of Health and the official legal portals confirm the enactment of Government Regulation No. 28 of 2024, which implements the Health Law and strengthens the framework for controlling addictive substances, including tobacco products and electronic cigarettes. The Ministry of Health states that under Article 430 of PP 28/2024, the objectives of controlling tobacco and electronic cigarettes include reducing morbidity and mortality from smoking, increasing public awareness of the dangers of smoking and the benefits of living without smoking, and protecting people from the dangers of consuming or being exposed to addictive substances. The same official Ministry source states that the regulation prohibits the sale of tobacco products and e-cigarettes within 200 meters of educational institutions and children’s play areas, bans single-stick retail sales except for cigars and e-cigarettes, and restricts product placement near entrances, exits, and high-traffic areas. These new national provisions matter for the Solok findings because they indicate that the broader policy environment is moving toward stronger tobacco control, which raises expectations for local governments to strengthen implementation rather than merely maintain existing rules. The findings can be synthesized in Table 3.

Table 3. Synthesis of research findings

The table makes clear that the Solok case is not one of legal emptiness, but of implementation thinness. The city has the law, the target categories, and at least some activation of implementing actors. Yet the supporting system remains weak in continuity, monitoring, and social normalization. This is the defining empirical picture that emerges from the findings. Table 4 consolidates the main data points that anchor the results section.

Taken together, the results establish four broad empirical conclusions. First, Solok’s smoke-free policy has a valid legal and normative basis. Second, implementation capacity and routine coordination are weak relative to the regulation's ambition. Third, compliance within designated smoke-free areas remains inconsistent. Fourth, the city’s experience reflects a wider national pattern in which smoke-free regulations are widespread, but enforcement and evaluation remain underdeveloped. These findings set the stage for the discussion section, which interprets the evidence through policy implementation theory, policy evaluation, and sustainable development.

Table 4. Main points of the research data

4.1 Discussion

The findings presented above show that Solok City’s smoke-free regulation cannot be understood adequately through a simple dichotomy of implemented versus not implemented. The empirical picture is more complex. The regulation exists, the protected areas are clearly defined, local authorities have taken some visible steps—especially since 2024—and the public-health rationale is beyond dispute. Yet smoking remains present in protected spaces, institutional coordination remains weak, and routine evaluation has not yet become an administrative habit. The most analytically persuasive interpretation is therefore that Solok represents a case of incomplete institutionalization. This concept is useful because it captures a condition in which policy is legally established and partially activated, but not yet socially embedded or administratively consolidated [75, 89, 90].

The first criterion, policy appropriateness, appears relatively strong in Solok. The city has clearly chosen the right policy targets. Schools, healthcare facilities, children's play areas, workplaces, public transportation, and enclosed public spaces are all places where smoke-free protection is most needed. Official WHO guidance stating that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke strongly supports this. Similarly, the more recent national framework under Government Regulation 28/2024 strengthens the legitimacy of local regulations by emphasizing protection from the harms of smoking and passive exposure. Thus, Solok's choice of regulations is not misplaced. The regulations address a real and well-defined public problem. However, the findings also indicate that policy appropriateness does not automatically translate into policy effectiveness. In this research, the regulations are depicted as failing to address the problems they are intended to address. This is a crucial distinction: a policy can be normatively correct but still perform poorly. In Solok, the law identifies the appropriate spaces and hazards, yet protected spaces still experience violations. This suggests that the policy's substantive design is stronger than its practical problem-solving capacity. In terms of policy analysis, Solok has achieved a relatively high level of formal coherence but a lower level of operational effectiveness. Therefore, its main weakness lies not in the choice of interventions, but in the ability to translate formal regulations into sustainable behavioral change [91-93].

The second dimension, the suitability of implementers, reveals a more significant problem. Actors responsible for implementation do exist. This research identifies the Health Office, Community Health Centers, Public Order Agency, and other local institutions as relevant implementers. At the same time, the news report on the 2024 Smoke-Free Zone coordination meeting confirms that local governments have attempted to develop an inter-agency response. However, the research also explains that this inter-agency function only became apparent in 2024, four years after the regulation was adopted, and regular coordination and evaluation have yet to be established. This suggests that the problem with policy implementation is not a lack of actors but rather a failure to integrate them. These institutions exist, but they do not yet operate as a highly structured implementation network [68, 94, 95].

The framework demonstrates that policy outcomes depend not only on the policy's content but also on the political, institutional, and resource context in which it is implemented [43]. In Solok, the content is relatively strong: the regulation clearly identifies the problem and defines the protected areas. However, the implementation context is weak. The research points to limited operational support for outreach, the absence of a regular evaluation agenda, and the need for stronger collaboration between health institutions and law enforcement actors. The WHO Indonesia 2026 report underscores the significance of these contextual barriers, listing a weak task force structure, insufficient human resources, limited funding, and poor monitoring as key obstacles to the enforcement of smoke-free laws across Indonesia.

The third dimension, target appropriateness, produces another important insight. The research repeatedly affirms that the target locations of Solok’s smoke-free areas policy are correct. Yet it also shows that smoking continues within or around those very spaces. This suggests that the city’s problem is not incorrect targeting, but incomplete target transformation. In other words, the city has designated the appropriate spaces, but they have not yet been converted into consistently smoke-free environments. This is more than a semantic point. In smoke-free governance, the real target is not simply the physical space, but the behavioral order of that space. A school becomes a successful smoke-free area not when the regulation names it as such, but when smoking becomes visibly unacceptable there, and institutions can enforce that norm reliably. The same applies to hospitals, offices, and transport. Solok’s findings show that the regulation has accomplished the first step designation, but not the second step behavioral stabilization.

Local smoking intensity data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, as cited in the research, helps explain why this targeted transformation is difficult. A neighborhood where a large proportion of smokers fall into the category of 60 or more cigarettes per week is one where smoking is not an occasional or marginal occurrence. Smoking is more habitual, socially visible, and potentially more difficult to eliminate from daily routines. This does not invalidate the regulation; rather, it demonstrates that implementation requires more than isolated signs or warnings. In local neighborhoods with high smoking rates, smoke-free policies must be accompanied by repeated communication, visible monitoring, and clearer sanctions if the target space is to be truly protected. Therefore, the policy operates within difficult social conditions, which is precisely why the depth of implementation is so crucial [96-98].

The fourth dimension, environmental appropriateness, may be the most revealing. The findings indicate that Solok’s smoke-free regulation operates in an environment marked by incomplete public acceptance, continued social tolerance of smoking, and weakly routinized bureaucratic commitment. The research explicitly notes that the policy continues to provoke debate over smokers’ rights and perceived economic consequences, while public understanding of the regulation and its health rationale remains weak. Some public officials themselves reportedly smoke in work settings, which is especially consequential because state actors are expected to model compliance. In environmental terms, the smoke-free areas policy is therefore trying to enforce a strong public norm in a setting where that norm has not yet been fully socialized or consistently embodied by institutions. That weakens policy legitimacy and lowers the social cost of violation [99, 100].

This finding is especially significant for policy analysis because it highlights the distinction between legal and normative authority. A regulation has legal authority once enacted. It acquires normative authority only when it becomes widely seen as legitimate, expected, and practically binding [101, 102]. The Solok appears to have achieved the first more than the second. Citizens know that smoke-free rules exist, but many do not behave as though those rules are unavoidable. Some institutions do not consistently project the rule as a serious and permanent norm. That gap weakens implementation because people respond not only to formal law, but also to signals about how strongly institutions intend to uphold it. Where the rule appears negotiable, intermittent, or weakly enforced, compliance remains fragile.

The fifth dimension further sharpens this interpretation. The research shows that socialization, supervision, and evaluation were not yet functioning as continuous routines. Outreach became more visible only in 2024 and remained infrequent. Health officials reported that they often had to rely on incidental opportunities during broader community activities to discuss the harms of smoking. This means the policy's process side is weakly institutionalized. Citizens are not receiving repeated, predictable signals about the regulation, and implementers are not operating within a stable rhythm of coordination, field monitoring, and evaluation. In process terms, the city remains closer to episodic enforcement than to systematic implementation [103, 104].

This process weakness matters because public policy becomes real through repetition and predictability. If citizens repeatedly encounter clear communication, routine inspections, and credible follow-up, they begin to perceive the policy as stable and binding [105]. If, on the other hand, communication is sporadic and enforcement depends on the presence of individual officers, the regulation remains fragile as a social norm [102]. The research’s observation that people may comply when officers are present but revert after they leave is especially revealing. It suggests that the current implementation pattern produces compliance as a temporary reaction to supervision rather than as an internalized norm. That is a hallmark of shallow institutionalization.

The evaluative perspective helps distinguish more clearly between the policy's consequences and the judgment of its success or failure [106]. On the consequence side, Solok’s smoke-free areas regulation has already produced something important: it has formally established the principle that shared spaces in the city should be protected from tobacco smoke. This is a non-trivial consequence. Local regulation defines expectations, responsibilities, and public values. By creating smoke-free categories, Solok City has stated that clean air in schools, hospitals, government offices, places of worship, and public transport is a legitimate public interest. The research strongly supports this, reporting community demand for enforcement of the rule, especially in schools and health settings, to protect children and older adults.

Yet the consequences also remain incomplete. The intended practical result of the policy is not merely formal recognition that smoke-free areas should exist. The intended result is the actual reduction of smoking behavior and second-hand smoke exposure in those areas. On that point, the evidence remains unsatisfactory. Smoking continues in protected spaces, public awareness and internalization are still weak, and institutional routines remain inconsistent. Thus, the policy has generated a formal protective consequence, but not yet a consistently material protective outcome. This distinction matters because it clarifies why the Solok case should not be judged as a total failure. The policy does have meaning and value. But it also cannot yet be judged a clear success. Its effects are real but incomplete.

That is why the most accurate overall evaluative judgment is that Solok’s smoke-free policy is partially successful in formalization but weak in consolidation. This middle position is more analytically useful than a binary success/failure label. It captures the real character of the case. The city has adopted the correct normative framework and has begun moving toward more visible implementation, especially since 2024. At the same time, the city has not yet built the full governance ecology needed for the policy to function as a stable everyday reality. There is a law, but not yet a strong implementation regime. There is socialization, but not yet a deeply internalized norm. There is inter-agency movement, but not yet a routine coordination architecture. In short, there is policy presence without full policy consolidation.

This interpretation also aligns with the understanding of policy evaluation as producing valid information on policy performance and contributing to revising or strengthening the policy when necessary [107]. These findings do not imply that Solok should abandon its smoke-free area policy. Rather, the policy's objectives remain well-founded, supported by official health evidence and national law. These findings imply that the city should treat implementation as an unfinished institutional project. Evaluation in this sense does not lead to policy rejection; rather, it aims to diagnose where the implementation chain is weakest. In Solok, the weak links are coordination, routinization, enforcement credibility, and public internalization.

The findings of this study should be interpreted cautiously as evidence of implementation gaps rather than as definitive proof of full or partial institutionalization. This study does not claim to measure institutionalization through longitudinal data, comparative city-level benchmarks, or standardized performance indicators. Instead, it identifies practical weaknesses in the local implementation process based on interviews, field observations, and document analysis. This more modest interpretation is important because the available evidence supports a focused assessment of how the smoke-free area policy operates in practice, but it does not yet allow broader causal claims about overall governance performance.

Similarly, the relationship between Solok’s smoke-free area policy and sustainable development is framed as a contextual implication rather than as a direct empirical outcome. The link to SDG 3 is relatively clear because smoke-free policy directly concerns public health protection and the reduction of exposure to second-hand smoke. However, the connection to SDG 11.6, SDG 11.7, and broader sustainable urban governance should be treated more carefully. This study does not empirically measure urban air quality, inclusive public-space access, or citywide sustainability outcomes. Rather, it suggests that weak implementation of smoke-free areas may limit the ability of local government to create healthier and safer public environments, particularly in schools, health facilities, government offices, public transportation spaces, and other shared settings. Therefore, sustainable urban governance is discussed only as a broader policy implication of smoke-free implementation gaps, not as a directly measured outcome of this study.

A sustainable development perspective further expands this diagnosis. Smoke-free regulations are directly relevant to SDG 3 because they protect communities from preventable health risks associated with tobacco smoke and support healthier lives and well-being. They are also relevant to SDG 11 because they impact the quality, safety, and inclusiveness of shared urban spaces. Smoke-free schools protect children's learning environments. Smoke-free healthcare facilities strengthen the healing function of these institutions. Smoke-free offices or government buildings contribute to a healthier public service environment. A smoke-free transportation system improves the everyday urban mobility experience. Thus, weak implementation in Solok not only means incomplete compliance with health regulations but also incomplete progress toward healthier, more inclusive urban governance.

This sustainable development lens is particularly important because it shifts the meaning of smoke-free areas from a narrow anti-smoking regulation to a broader question of public-space justice. Smoke-free policy is not aimed only at smokers. It is fundamentally a policy for protecting non-smokers and vulnerable groups from involuntary exposure. Children, patients, older people, public-service users, and non-smoking workers bear a disproportionate burden when smoke-free rules are weakly enforced. WHO’s evidence that there is no safe level of second-hand smoke exposure makes this normative point especially strong. In Solok, the research’s emphasis on the need to protect school and health environments suggests that at least part of the community already understands smoke-free policy in those distributive terms. Weak implementation, therefore, has ethical significance: it leaves the costs of policy weakness to be borne by those least able to avoid exposure.

The role of monitoring infrastructure in this process should also be emphasized. WHO Indonesia’s 2023 launch of the smoke-free area dashboard is highly relevant here. The official WHO Indonesia report explains that the dashboard was designed to monitor and visualize the progress of smoke-free policy implementation at city and district levels, using four assessment components: regulation, inspection, enforcement, and compliance. The existence of such a tool is analytically important because it confirms that smoke-free implementation cannot be treated as an invisible administrative process. It can and should be monitored systematically. For Solok, this strengthens the argument that routine evaluation and measurable inspection are not optional extras. They are essential components of effective policy management. Where implementation is weak, monitoring tools provide a way to move from impressionistic judgments to more structured learning and accountability.

A final point of discussion concerns the relationship between legal diffusion and implementation capacity in decentralized governance. Indonesia’s smoke-free policy landscape, as shown by the WHO, demonstrates the rapid spread of local smoke-free rules but not an equivalent increase in enforcement effectiveness. Solok fits this pattern closely. The case, therefore, illustrates a broader challenge of decentralization: local governments may adopt nationally encouraged policies, but their capacity to implement those policies effectively depends on local resources, leadership, coordination mechanisms, and bureaucratic discipline. The implication is that local smoke-free regulation should not be assessed only by whether it has been enacted. It should be assessed by whether the local state can operationalize it as a living governance routine. Solok has made the first move, but not yet the second fully.

Bringing all of this together, the most persuasive analytical conclusion is that Solok’s smoke-free policy is characterized by asymmetry between strong legal-normative content and weak implementation context. The city has the right regulations, the right protected spaces, and a legitimate public health objective. But it still lacks the depth of coordination, monitoring, enforcement, and social internalization needed to make the policy function consistently across everyday urban settings. That is why the case should be understood not as a failure of regulation design, but as a failure of implementation consolidation. Solok’s central challenge is therefore not writing better smoke-free rules; it is building a stronger and more routinized local governance system around the rules it already has. In that sense, the findings and discussion together point to a practical and theoretical lesson. In practice, smoke-free governance in Solok will improve only when inter-agency coordination becomes routine, outreach becomes continuous, sanctions become more credible, institutions model compliance, and evaluation becomes systematic. Theoretically, the case confirms that policy adoption is only the beginning of policy effectiveness. Local public health regulation succeeds when law, institutions, routines, and public norms begin to reinforce one another. In Solok, the reinforcement process has begun but is not yet complete. That is the central meaning of incomplete institutionalization.