Distributional justice concerns invariably arise in environmental governance, especially in the management of commons. These initiatives generate diverse costs and benefits that are typically heterogeneously distributed. Distribution of these impacts in a way that is considered fair by local stakeholders is a moral imperative and instrumental to conservation success. However, understandings of local stakeholders’ conceptions of distributional fairness are rare. We examine what local stakeholders consider distributional fairness with respect to benefits from a marine protected area in Fiji. We elicited individuals’ fairness judgements of five distributional justice principles: equality, need, and three forms of proportionality based on customary rights, fisheries opportunity-costs, and management involvement. We examine how judgements are associated with characteristics indicative of key identities. We find the rights-based principle was considered the ‘most fair’ and the opportunity-costs principle the least. We also find that education was positively related to fairness judgements of all principles, whilst wealth was related to the equality and opportunity-based principles. These results elucidate how fairness judgements could be influenced by elements of social change in the Global South (e.g. increasing formal education, market engagement). Our results suggest fair environmental governance requires explicit identification of fairness conceptions of those most affected by such initiatives.