A Thematic Mapping Approach to Stunting Segmentation in Indonesia by Province Using Finite Mixture Partial Least Squares Method

Stunting remains one of Indonesia’s most persistent public-health problems, and the nationalprevalence conceals subtantial variation across the country’s 38 provinces. This study modelsseven latent constructs behind stunting, antenatal care, early initiation of breastfeeding,immunization, sanitation, exclusive breastfeeding, low birth weight, and stunting using PartialLeast Squares Structural Equation Modeling on 2023–2024 provincial health-profile datapublished by Indonesia’s Ministry of Health, and then applies Finite Mixture Partial LeastSquares (FIMIX-PLS) to detect unobserved heterogeneity across provinces and to translate theresulting segments into a thematic map. The measurement model satisfied every recommendedvalidity and reliability threshold, with an Average Variance Extracted between 0.835 and0.932 and both Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability above 0.80. In the pooled nationalmodel, low birth weight was the only construct with a statistically significant direct path tostunting (β = 0.540, p .001); antenatal care showed no significant direct path to stunting(β = −0.143, p = .678) but exerted a significant total effect (β = −0.365) entirely through afully mediated pathway via low birth weight (indirect effect β = −0.263, p = .022), togetherexplaining 63.0% of the variance in stunting. Model-selection criteria favored a three-segmentsolution comprising 21, 10, and 7 provinces, dominated respectively by sanitation-related,birth-weight-related, and breastfeeding-related structural pathways. Mapping these segmentsgeographically shows that provinces sharing a dominant pathway are not scattered at randombut tend to cluster by region, indicating that stunting-reduction programs should be tailoredto each segment’s dominant pathway rather than applied uniformly across the whole country.