{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,22]],"date-time":"2026-10-22T02:51:24Z","timestamp":1792637484466,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,8]],"date-time":"2026-01-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1767830400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Sociol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background Since 2007, Kazakhstan has gradually modernized gambling regulation and in 2023\u20132024 enacted major reforms, including the creation of a specialized regulator, tighter advertising rules, expanded exclusion regimes, and stronger criminal enforcement. Objective: To assess how this evolving regulatory model aligns with international practice and to derive evidence-informed policy options, treating gambling law as a sociolegal regime for allocating gambling-related risks and fiscal rents. Methods: We use an exploratory sociolegal mixed-methods design that combines doctrinal and comparative legal analysis with a descriptive synthesis of 2019\u20132024 official statistics on market size, taxation, enforcement, and harm-reduction proxies. Results Kazakhstan\u2019s legal gambling market expanded further in 2024, recorded criminal cases for illegal gambling declined, and coverage of debtor-based and voluntary self-exclusion instruments increased sharply, while a large offshore online segment persisted. Situating these trends within a comparative coding of the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy, we show that Kazakhstan combines strict advertising controls, extensive exclusion tools, and advanced enforcement technologies with a comparatively heavy and complex tax mix and a regulator located within a line ministry. Conclusion A public-health-oriented configuration of instruments appears normatively most consistent with the dual goals of channeling demand into the legal market and mitigating gambling-related harm, but the available data remain descriptive and the post-reform observation window is short. We discuss incremental policy options regarding taxation, regulator autonomy, harm reduction, and cross-border enforcement.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fsoc.2025.1718858","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,8]],"date-time":"2026-01-08T05:11:38Z","timestamp":1767849098000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Between fiscal returns and social harm: reframing gambling regulation in Kazakhstan through international evidence"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"10","author":[{"given":"Zhanna","family":"Khamzina","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yermek","family":"Buribayev","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"107","DOI":"10.1186\/s12954-025-01219-7","article-title":"Impact of Spanish gambling regulations on online gambling behavior and marketing strategies","volume":"22","author":"Aonso-Diego","year":"2025","journal-title":"Harm Reduct. 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