泛化到多个列，为什么不呢:

columns = ['whatever', 'columns', 'you', 'choose']
df['period'] = df[columns].astype(str).sum(axis=1)

虽然@silvado的答案是好的，如果你把df.map(str)改为df.astype(str)，它会更快:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})

In [131]: %timeit df["Year"].map(str)
10000 loops, best of 3: 132 us per loop

In [132]: %timeit df["Year"].astype(str)
10000 loops, best of 3: 82.2 us per loop

更有效率的是

def concat_df_str1(df):
    """ run time: 1.3416s """
    return pd.Series([''.join(row.astype(str)) for row in df.values], index=df.index)

下面是一个时间测试:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

from time import time


def concat_df_str1(df):
    """ run time: 1.3416s """
    return pd.Series([''.join(row.astype(str)) for row in df.values], index=df.index)


def concat_df_str2(df):
    """ run time: 5.2758s """
    return df.astype(str).sum(axis=1)


def concat_df_str3(df):
    """ run time: 5.0076s """
    df = df.astype(str)
    return df[0] + df[1] + df[2] + df[3] + df[4] + \
           df[5] + df[6] + df[7] + df[8] + df[9]


def concat_df_str4(df):
    """ run time: 7.8624s """
    return df.astype(str).apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1)


def main():
    df = pd.DataFrame(np.zeros(1000000).reshape(100000, 10))
    df = df.astype(int)

    time1 = time()
    df_en = concat_df_str4(df)
    print('run time: %.4fs' % (time() - time1))
    print(df_en.head(10))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

最后，当使用sum(concat_df_str2)时，结果不是简单的concat，它将转换为整数。

正如前面提到的，必须将每个列转换为字符串，然后使用加号运算符将两个字符串列合并。使用NumPy可以大大提高性能。

%timeit df['Year'].values.astype(str) + df.quarter
71.1 ms ± 3.76 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

%timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
565 ms ± 22.3 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

下面是一个我觉得非常通用的实现:

In [1]: import pandas as pd 

In [2]: df = pd.DataFrame([[0, 'the', 'quick', 'brown'],
   ...:                    [1, 'fox', 'jumps', 'over'], 
   ...:                    [2, 'the', 'lazy', 'dog']],
   ...:                   columns=['c0', 'c1', 'c2', 'c3'])

In [3]: def str_join(df, sep, *cols):
   ...:     from functools import reduce
   ...:     return reduce(lambda x, y: x.astype(str).str.cat(y.astype(str), sep=sep), 
   ...:                   [df[col] for col in cols])
   ...: 

In [4]: df['cat'] = str_join(df, '-', 'c0', 'c1', 'c2', 'c3')

In [5]: df
Out[5]: 
   c0   c1     c2     c3                cat
0   0  the  quick  brown  0-the-quick-brown
1   1  fox  jumps   over   1-fox-jumps-over
2   2  the   lazy    dog     2-the-lazy-dog

类似于@geher的答案，但可以使用任何你喜欢的分隔符:

SEP = " "
INPUT_COLUMNS_WITH_SEP = ",sep,".join(INPUT_COLUMNS).split(",")

df.assign(sep=SEP)[INPUT_COLUMNS_WITH_SEP].sum(axis=1)