Result-based research and tool-based research are constructed as the major theoretical frameworks in do-mestic and foreign research involving public participation.The former takes more extensive and democratic public participation as the research objective,while the latter focuses on exploring whether public participa-tion is beneficial for achieving the decision objective.Previous research on traditional village protection usually utilized the result-based framework to analyze the participation status of research objects in the protection process,and proposed strategies and methods to improve the effectiveness of research object participation.However,there is insufficient discussion on which framework is most conducive to the high-quality traditional village protection.The results of numerous protection cases indicate that extensive and disorderly public par-ticipation may lower the traditional village protection quality.Therefore,it is necessary to take the improve-ment of traditional village protection quality as the research objective,so as to explore the public participation mode in traditional village protection under the tool-based framework.This paper adopts public participation decision model by Thomas as the basic framework,and the deci-sion quality and satisfaction of traditional village protection were set as the constraints.Based on the protec-tion practices and public participation status of some traditional villages in Southwestern China,seven issues related to the selection of public participation modes proposed by Thomas were analyzed and solved.The re-sults indicated that among Thomas'five modes,namely Autonomous Management Decision,Modified Au-tonomous Management Decision,Segmented Public Consultation,Unitary Public Consultation and Public De-cision,only the mode of Unitary Public Consultation could effectively guide the traditional village protection and improve the traditional village protection quality.Under this mode,decision-makers were required to en-gage in overall consultation with all major participants on traditional village protection,rather than to engage in overall consultation with some participants or in decentralized consultation with all participants,and deci-sion-makers did not need to share decision authority with others after collecting the opinions of all partici-pants.In terms of the characteristics of Unity Public Consultation,the system improvement and mechanism design of public participation in traditional village protection were discussed from the aspects of topic consulta-tion,decision-making,decision implementation and practical consultation.Finally,it is recommended to en-hance the overall and representative participation of participants during the topic consultation,identify the ac-tual protection objectives,and independently formulate decision-making plans.In addition,due to the asym-metric information and unclear demands obtained by the participants during the decision implementation,it is necessary to propose specific solutions for specific problems and stages through overall negotiation.